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Corumbá fire, 18 July 2020 Corumbá, Porto Murtinho

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2020, 16:53 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,154 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 477th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 888 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Porto Murtinho · 2016Porto Murtinho · 2019Porto Murtinho · 2017Porto Murtinho · 2023

Burnt area
3,154ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
18 Jul 2020 – 27 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
18 Jul
2020
Heat detections
135
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
124MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul27 Jul
27 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2020 · 219 MW · 16 19 Jul 2020 · 272 MW · 28 20 Jul 2020 · 97 MW · 14 21 Jul 2020 · 74 MW · 14 22 Jul 2020 · 130 MW · 22 23 Jul 2020 · 210 MW · 21 24 Jul 2020 · 52 MW · 9 25 Jul 2020 · 7 MW · 6 27 Jul 2020 · 57 MW · 5
18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 22 Jul 24 Jul 27 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
55km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,585 ha in 2016, 841 ha in 2017, 2,431 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,604 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    2,858 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.0 %
  2. Porto Murtinho 12,859 inhabitants
    332 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
18 Jul 34.2 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jul 33.5 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul 32.6 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 32.5 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul 33.4 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jul 34.0 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul 31.9 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jul 19.3 °C 57 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Jul 27.6 °C 40 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Jul 32.4 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jul after 31.7 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jul after 18.7 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Jul after 26.8 °C 41 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
31 Jul after 30.7 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Aug after 33.4 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Aug after 33.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Aug after 32.8 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug after 33.9 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug after 32.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 32.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Aug after 33.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Aug after 34.2 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Aug after 33.8 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Aug after 34.8 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug after 34.8 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Aug after 26.4 °C 37 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 11 Jul 2020
After · 3 Aug 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 135Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Corumbá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2020 and 27 July 2020: 10 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,154 hectares (31.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (2,858 ha, 0.0 %); Porto Murtinho (332 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 193 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 193.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 135 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.