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Fernando Falcão fire, August 2022 Fernando Falcão

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2022, 16:45 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2022 in Fernando Falcão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,111 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 560th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 647 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mirador · 2017Mirador · 2025Mirador · 2024Fernando Falcão · 2017

Burnt area
3,111ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
26 Aug 2022 – 9 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Aug
2022
Heat detections
97
in a single hotspot: 127 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
155MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug9 Sept
9 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 2022 · 7 MW · 1 30 Aug 2022 · 143 MW · 4 31 Aug 2022 · 4 MW · 1 2 Sept 2022 · 841 MW · 54 3 Sept 2022 · 50 MW · 11 4 Sept 2022 · 91 MW · 11 5 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 1 6 Sept 2022 · 242 MW · 13 9 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 1
26 Aug 31 Aug 2 Sept 3 Sept 5 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

36°high
47km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 56 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Fernando Falcão 10,873 inhabitants where it started
    3,132 ha reached on 26 Aug
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
26 Aug 33.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug 34.0 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Aug 33.8 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 35.3 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Aug 34.6 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug 33.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept 33.4 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Sept 33.9 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept 33.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept 35.8 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 35.5 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 35.3 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Sept 34.8 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept 34.4 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Sept 34.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 35.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept after 35.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
12 Sept after 34.0 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept after 34.9 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept after 35.9 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Sept after 34.4 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept after 34.1 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
17 Sept after 33.9 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Sept after 32.5 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
19 Sept after 35.4 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2022
After · 16 Sept 2022

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 31 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10101 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
2829303112345678
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 · 97Every 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 Fernando Falcão fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2022 to 9 September 2022 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2022 to 5 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,111 hectares (31.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Fernando Falcão (3,132 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 5 September 2022 → 9 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 30 August 2022 → 26 August 2022.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 August 2022 to 5 September 2022. 97 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.

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.