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Corumbá fire, 6 August 2020 Corumbá

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2020, 05:08 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,201 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 63 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
24,201ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
6 Aug 2020 – 15 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Aug
2020
Heat detections
901
in a single hotspot: 346 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Energy released
17.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

6789101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
62km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.9 mm on 16 Aug.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,962 ha in 2016, 921 ha in 2017, 22,064 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 21,249 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    24,534 ha reached on 6 Aug
    0.4 %

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

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)
30 Jul 24.7 °C 39 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Jul 31.4 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Aug 33.8 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug 33.0 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug 33.5 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Aug 33.1 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Aug 33.1 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Aug 33.7 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Aug 33.5 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Aug 34.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Aug 34.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Aug 35.4 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Aug 34.6 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Aug 25.1 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
13 Aug 29.5 °C 39 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Aug 37.7 °C 22 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
15 Aug 32.7 °C 39 % 62 km/h 4.5 mm Moderate 14
16 Aug after 24.1 °C 77 % 43 km/h 15.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2020
After · 22 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 · 901Every 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 6 August 2020 and 15 August 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 24,201 hectares (242.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (24,534 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.