How long did the Corumbá fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 September 2020 to 15 October 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 13 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 68,979 hectares (689.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (66,807 ha, 1.0 %); Poconé (1 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 43.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2020-09-24 → 2020-10-15

Corumbá fire, 24 September 2020 Corumbá, Poconé

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2020, 16:35 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 68,979 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 14th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 13 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2016 Corumbá · 2019 Corumbá · 2024 Corumbá · 2024

Burnt area: 68,979ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 24 Sept 2020 – 15 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 24 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 5,989; in a single hotspot: 1,395 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 6.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept15 Oct

Play back 16 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 28 Sept 2 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 14 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

43°high

55km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 18 Oct.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,513 ha in 2016, 53 ha in 2017, 1,002 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,901 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 44% of the area of London (690 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

Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started

66,807 ha reached on 24 Sept

1.0 %
Poconé 31,217 inhabitants

1 ha reached on 24 Sept

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 area0.42 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.42 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
24 Sept	39.8 °C	22 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Sept	41.0 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
26 Sept	40.3 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
27 Sept	39.2 °C	25 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
28 Sept	35.8 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Sept	39.7 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Sept	42.0 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
1 Oct	41.8 °C	20 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Oct	40.9 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
3 Oct	42.1 °C	20 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
4 Oct	38.2 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Oct	39.6 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Oct	41.6 °C	23 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Oct	40.8 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
8 Oct	42.2 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
9 Oct	43.0 °C	20 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
10 Oct	41.5 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
11 Oct	39.2 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
12 Oct	36.6 °C	39 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
13 Oct	40.6 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
14 Oct	39.3 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Oct	30.7 °C	54 %	32 km/h	5.9 mm	Low 6
16 Oct after	33.8 °C	47 %	18 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 14
17 Oct after	38.4 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Oct after	37.3 °C	31 %	32 km/h	1.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Sept 2020

After · 22 Oct 2020

Before After

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 · 5,989Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Corumbá fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 September 2020 to 15 October 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 13 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 68,979 hectares (689.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (66,807 ha, 1.0 %); Poconé (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 43.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 13 October 2020 → 15 October 2020.
25 October 2026 Start date: 25 September 2020 → 24 September 2020.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2020 to 13 October 2020. 5,989 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.

Where it burned