How long did the Deseado fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 December 2022 and 18 December 2022: 3 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 2,805 hectares (28.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Deseado (2,769 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 55 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 Argentina (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AR · Argentina · 2022-12-16 → 2022-12-18

Deseado fire, December 2022 Deseado

Out · last detection 18 Dec 2022, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 16 December 2022 in Deseado, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,805 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 178 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Deseado · 2019 Deseado · 2022

Burnt area: 2,805ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 16 Dec 2022 – 18 Dec 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 16 Dec; 2022
Heat detections: 98; in a single hotspot: 249 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Dec18 Dec

Play back 18 Dec 2022

How it evolved, day by day

16 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

27°high

55km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 48 ha in 2019.

48 ha Deseado fire, February 2019 2,248 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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

Deseado 107,630 inhabitants where it started

2,769 ha reached on 16 Dec

0.0 %

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)
16 Dec	26.3 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Dec	26.6 °C	14 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Dec	23.3 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Dec after	24.8 °C	20 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Dec after	27.4 °C	27 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Dec after	29.1 °C	25 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
22 Dec after	24.8 °C	16 %	86 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
23 Dec after	22.5 °C	12 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
24 Dec after	26.8 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Dec after	20.9 °C	33 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
26 Dec after	29.3 °C	10 %	76 km/h	0.3 mm	Very extreme 71
27 Dec after	19.9 °C	16 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
28 Dec after	27.1 °C	20 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Dec 2022

After · 25 Dec 2022

Before After

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 20 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1016 µg/m³

Optical depth0.36

1415161718192021

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 · 98Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Deseado fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 December 2022 and 18 December 2022: 3 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 2,805 hectares (28.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Deseado (2,769 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 55 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 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

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 98 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.

Where it burned