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Cushamen fire, January 2026 Cushamen

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2026, 18:35 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2026 in Cushamen, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 46,124 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Chubut since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 2 in Argentina in 2026, of 74.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cushamen · 2025Cushamen · 2019Bariloche · 2021Bariloche · 2021

Burnt area
46,124ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
5 Jan 2026 – 2 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
5 Jan
2026
Heat detections
3,407
in a single hotspot: 600 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
2.9GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

2 Feb 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan2 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jan 2026 · 897 MW · 4 6 Jan 2026 · 4,946 MW · 318 7 Jan 2026 · 2,389 MW · 272 8 Jan 2026 · 846 MW · 99 9 Jan 2026 · 8,357 MW · 244 10 Jan 2026 · 22,896 MW · 734 11 Jan 2026 · 712 MW · 220 12 Jan 2026 · 59 MW · 5 13 Jan 2026 · 2,036 MW · 43 14 Jan 2026 · 140 MW · 46 15 Jan 2026 · 34 MW · 1 17 Jan 2026 · 197 MW · 7 18 Jan 2026 · 68 MW · 11 19 Jan 2026 · 3,498 MW · 78 20 Jan 2026 · 2,319 MW · 86 21 Jan 2026 · 3,462 MW · 139 22 Jan 2026 · 1,453 MW · 164 23 Jan 2026 · 609 MW · 39 24 Jan 2026 · 1,694 MW · 89 25 Jan 2026 · 10,944 MW · 186 26 Jan 2026 · 4,141 MW · 194 27 Jan 2026 · 257 MW · 78 29 Jan 2026 · 1,017 MW · 45 30 Jan 2026 · 152 MW · 32 31 Jan 2026 · 620 MW · 31 1 Feb 2026 · 2,192 MW · 77 2 Feb 2026 · 1,604 MW · 165
5 Jan 9 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 18 Jan 22 Jan 26 Jan 31 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

28°high
95km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.5 mm on 10 Feb.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 164 ha in 2019, 486 ha in 2023, 1,248 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 29% of the area of London (461 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
    45,980 ha reached on 5 Jan
    2.8 %

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)
5 Jan 28.2 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Jan 21.2 °C 31 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Jan 22.7 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
8 Jan 24.8 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
9 Jan 25.7 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 18
10 Jan 21.7 °C 25 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
11 Jan 15.5 °C 39 % 53 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 1
12 Jan 16.5 °C 21 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
13 Jan 18.1 °C 27 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
14 Jan 14.7 °C 43 % 84 km/h 6.8 mm Very low 1
15 Jan 11.4 °C 30 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
16 Jan 13.5 °C 48 % 90 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
17 Jan 12.4 °C 30 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
18 Jan 20.9 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
19 Jan 25.8 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
20 Jan 27.2 °C 16 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Jan 24.1 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
22 Jan 17.3 °C 30 % 28 km/h 1.0 mm Low 7
23 Jan 23.0 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
24 Jan 20.9 °C 26 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Jan 19.4 °C 20 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Jan 19.3 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Jan 16.6 °C 37 % 74 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
28 Jan 20.0 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Low 7
29 Jan 27.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 Jan 28.4 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
31 Jan 26.0 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Feb 24.8 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
2 Feb 16.8 °C 35 % 95 km/h 11.4 mm Very low 2
3 Feb after 14.1 °C 46 % 53 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 0
4 Feb after 12.7 °C 30 % 62 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 2
5 Feb after 12.7 °C 31 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
6 Feb after 17.0 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
7 Feb after 24.4 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
8 Feb after 21.1 °C 28 % 63 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
9 Feb after 13.7 °C 37 % 78 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 15
10 Feb after 6.4 °C 60 % 82 km/h 22.5 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2025
After · 9 Feb 2026

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 23 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 274 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 114: 7.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak274 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10276 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
34567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345
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 · 3,407Every 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 5 January 2026 and 2 February 2026: 29 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 46,124 hectares (461.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cushamen (45,980 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 95 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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. 3,407 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.