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Cushamen fire, January 2025 Cushamen

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2025, 18:29 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2025 in Cushamen, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,459 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Chubut since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 37 in Argentina in 2025, of 206.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cushamen · 2026Cushamen · 2019Bariloche · 2021Bariloche · 2021

Burnt area
4,459ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
15 Jan 2025 – 29 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
15 Jan
2025
Heat detections
277
in a single hotspot: 200 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
633MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

30 Jan 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan29 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2025 · 1,982 MW · 52 16 Jan 2025 · 695 MW · 67 17 Jan 2025 · 619 MW · 21 18 Jan 2025 · 1,367 MW · 23 19 Jan 2025 · 160 MW · 27 21 Jan 2025 · 114 MW · 26 22 Jan 2025 · 2,387 MW · 40 25 Jan 2025 · 7 MW · 1 26 Jan 2025 · 147 MW · 12 27 Jan 2025 · 6 MW · 3 29 Jan 2025 · 11 MW · 2 30 Jan 2025 · 98 MW · 3
15 Jan 17 Jan 19 Jan 22 Jan 26 Jan 29 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
75km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 2 Feb.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 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. Cushamen where it started
    4,446 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.3 %

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)
15 Jan 17.7 °C 51 % 64 km/h 0.7 mm Low 8
16 Jan 21.4 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Jan 21.4 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Jan 26.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
19 Jan 27.9 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Jan 24.2 °C 28 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
21 Jan 22.6 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jan 24.7 °C 29 % 56 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
23 Jan 18.6 °C 41 % 58 km/h 2.2 mm Very low 4
24 Jan 18.3 °C 39 % 60 km/h 0.3 mm Low 9
25 Jan 25.4 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Jan 25.1 °C 28 % 75 km/h 1.7 mm Low 11
27 Jan 17.9 °C 32 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
28 Jan 25.8 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
29 Jan 30.2 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Jan after 29.2 °C 17 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Jan after 24.1 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Feb after 24.7 °C 16 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Feb after 15.6 °C 49 % 83 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2025
After · 5 Feb 2025

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 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1016 µg/m³
Optical depth0.17
131415161718192021222324252627282930311
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 · 277Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cushamen fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 January 2025 and 29 January 2025: 15 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 4,459 hectares (44.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cushamen (4,446 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100

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 911 · 100.

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. 277 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.