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Delfinópolis fire, September 2024 Delfinópolis

Out · last detection 5 Sept 2024, 16:09 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2024 in Delfinópolis, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,592 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 60th largest in Minas Gerais since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 599 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Burnt area
5,592ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
1 Sept 2024 – 5 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Sept
2024
Heat detections
170
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Sept 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept5 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

12345

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
30km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,006 ha in 2016, 1,737 ha in 2017, 176 ha in 2018, 403 ha in 2019, 855 ha in 2020, 1,378 ha in 2022, 194 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,002 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Delfinópolis 8,393 inhabitants where it started
    5,618 ha reached on 1 Sept
    4.0 %

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 Sept 30.0 °C 11 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Sept 30.4 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 31.0 °C 10 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 30.6 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 31.6 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept after 31.9 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept after 30.5 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept after 29.8 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept after 29.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept after 29.4 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept after 29.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept after 30.2 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Sept after 29.7 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept after 29.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Sept after 30.1 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2024
After · 12 Sept 2024

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 6 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1087 µg/m³
Optical depth1.31
30311234567891011121314
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 · 170Every 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 Delfinópolis fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 September 2024 and 5 September 2024: 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 5,592 hectares (55.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Delfinópolis (5,618 ha, 4.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

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.