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Corumbá fire, 15 October 2023 Corumbá

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2023, 18:28 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2023 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,105 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 362th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 242 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2021Corumbá · 2020Corumbá · 2016Porto Murtinho · 2019

Burnt area
4,105ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
15 Oct 2023 – 19 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Oct
2023
Heat detections
153
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
527MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct19 Oct
19 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2023 · 13 MW · 2 16 Oct 2023 · 1,278 MW · 103 17 Oct 2023 · 1,186 MW · 32 18 Oct 2023 · 139 MW · 12 19 Oct 2023 · 21 MW · 3
15 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct 19 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

41°high
56km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 857 ha in 2016, 2,034 ha in 2017, 665 ha in 2019, 1,896 ha in 2020, 2,491 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,982 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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
    4,163 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.1 %

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.

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)
15 Oct 39.2 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
16 Oct 40.1 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Oct 41.3 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Oct 38.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Oct 38.9 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
20 Oct after 36.2 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
21 Oct after 39.6 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Oct after 40.8 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Oct after 41.9 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
24 Oct after 35.6 °C 44 % 41 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2023
After · 26 Oct 2023

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.95
13141516171819202122
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 153Every 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 15 October 2023 and 19 October 2023: 5 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 4,105 hectares (41.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (4,163 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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. 153 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.

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.