Burned area
satellite only11,621ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 4 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BR · Brazil · –
Feliz Natal fire, 4 September 2018 Nova Ubiratã, Feliz Natal
Out · last detection 10 Sept 2018, 05:25 UTC
The fire started on 4 September 2018 in Feliz Natal, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,621 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 361th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1872 with a page). Number 24 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only7days
4 Sept 2018 to 10 Sept 2018: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 10 Sept 2018, 05:25 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only4 Sept 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 4 Sept 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only367
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 454 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 4 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only2,687MW
Total radiative power on 6 September 2018; hotspots that day: 172.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 6 Sept 2018
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model37.0FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 9.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 4 Sept 2018, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model37.6°C · 23% RH
High of 37.6 °C and minimum humidity of 23% on 9 September 2018; gusts of 32 km/h on 9 September 2018.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 4 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 11,621 ha
- Dates
- 4 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
- Name
- Feliz Natal
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/feliz-natal-2018-09-2?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire feliz-natal-2018-09-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-09-04 | 0 | 0 | 31.4 | 17.2 | 29 | 13.8 | 30.6 | 0 | 37 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-05 | 47 | 710 | 34.5 | 17.7 | 23 | 11.1 | 29.2 | 0 | 38.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-06 | 172 | 2,687 | 35.9 | 18.2 | 22 | 9.1 | 27.4 | 0 | 41.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-07 | 60 | 1,665 | 37.1 | 19.7 | 22 | 10.8 | 26.3 | 0 | 47.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-08 | 66 | 1,472 | 35.4 | 20.3 | 32 | 11 | 24.5 | 0 | 41.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-09 | 20 | 69 | 37.6 | 21.7 | 23 | 11.2 | 31.7 | 0 | 50.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2018-09-10 | 2 | 4 | 35 | 20.2 | 29 | 10.1 | 27 | 0 | 42.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-09-11 | 0 | 0 | 37.6 | 20.4 | 20 | 8.5 | 24.1 | 0 | 46.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 37.4 | 21.3 | 22 | 10.9 | 25.6 | 0 | 46.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 36.4 | 22.5 | 37 | 9.4 | 29.2 | 0.3 | 43.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-09-14 | 0 | 0 | 34.3 | 23.9 | 41 | 9.7 | 37.1 | 0.3 | 33.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2018-09-15 | 0 | 0 | 35.8 | 23.3 | 37 | 7.4 | 23 | 0 | 29.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2018-09-16 | 0 | 0 | 35.6 | 22.5 | 36 | 9.1 | 29.9 | 11.2 | 36.2 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 11,621ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 4 Sept 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 367
- in a single hotspot: 454 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
4 Sept10 Sept
10 Sept 2018
How it evolved, day by day
6 Sept
9 Sept
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
38°high
32km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity
It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.2 mm on 16 Sept.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,886 ha in 2016, 6,894 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,023 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Nova Ubiratã 11,530 inhabitants8,250 ha reached on 5 Sept0.7 %
-
3,443 ha reached on 5 Sept0.3 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area0.24 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 31.4 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Sept | 34.5 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 6 Sept | 35.9 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Sept | 37.1 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 8 Sept | 35.4 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Sept | 37.6 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 10 Sept | 35.0 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Sept after | 37.6 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 12 Sept after | 37.4 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 13 Sept after | 36.4 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Sept after | 34.3 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 37 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Sept after | 35.6 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 11.2 mm | High 36 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 37.0, a minimum humidity of 29% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.
FWI at the start
37.0
Minimum humidity
29 %
Days without rain
9
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Feliz Natal fire, 4 September 2018
11,621 ha
7 days
FWI 37.0
Min. humidity 29 %
Porto dos Gaúchos fire, October 2020
5,288 ha
4 days
FWI 32.2
Min. humidity 32 %
195 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 12 Oct.
Gaúcha do Norte fire, July 2016
10,685 ha
22 days
FWI 36.3
Min. humidity 29 %
183 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 21 Aug.
Nobres fire, August 2017
5,472 ha
12 days
FWI 28.3
Min. humidity 27 %
226 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Rosário Oeste fire, September 2020
66,650 ha
17 days
FWI 46.7
Min. humidity 31 %
189 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.7 mm on 18 Oct.
Nova Ubiratã fire, August 2022
14,323 ha
34 days
FWI 38.3
Min. humidity 28 %
32 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.5 mm on 23 Sept.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
11.2 mmfirst rain
16 Sept6 days after it ended
32km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 10 Sept, and on 16 Sept 11.2 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 28 Aug 2018
After · 17 Sept 2018
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 367Every 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
- 9,523 haFeliz Natal10 September 2016 · 9 days · 2 km away
- 16,576 haFeliz Natal10 September 2017 · 15 days · 6 km away
- 6,500 haNova Ubiratã6 September 2019 · 18 days · 12 km away
- 5,898 haFeliz Natal18 September 2017 · 10 days · 25 km away
- 14,323 haNova Ubiratã20 August 2022 · 34 days · 32 km away
- 11,774 haNova UbiratãSeptember 2020 · 15 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Feliz Natal fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2018 and 10 September 2018: 7 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 11,621 hectares (116.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nova Ubiratã (8,250 ha, 0.7 %); Feliz Natal (3,443 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
- 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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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. 367 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.