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Corumbá fire, 1 October 2020 Corumbá

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2020, 18:09 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2020 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,806 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 137th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 208 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
9,806ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
1 Oct 2020 – 11 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Oct
2020
Heat detections
330
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1234567891011

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
43km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 15 Oct.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,421 ha in 2017, 4,336 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,290 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    9,894 ha reached on 1 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
1 Oct 42.3 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Oct 41.2 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Oct 40.8 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Oct 34.3 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Oct 37.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct 40.0 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Oct 41.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Oct 41.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Oct 42.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Oct 40.1 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Oct 39.4 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Oct after 38.0 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
13 Oct after 40.6 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.9 mm High 33
14 Oct after 40.0 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 43
15 Oct after 29.1 °C 48 % 34 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Sept 2020
After · 18 Oct 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 · 330Every 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 1 October 2020 and 11 October 2020: 11 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 9,806 hectares (98.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (9,894 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.