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Formosa fire, October 2017 Formosa

Out · last detection 18 Oct 2017, 04:16 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2017 in Formosa, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,814 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 212th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 370 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Formosa · 2021Formosa · 2024Formosa · 2017Formosa · 2020

Burnt area
5,814ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
11 Oct 2017 – 18 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Oct
2017
Heat detections
168
in a single hotspot: 211 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
452MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct18 Oct
18 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2017 · 2,295 MW · 48 12 Oct 2017 · 507 MW · 36 13 Oct 2017 · 292 MW · 13 14 Oct 2017 · 213 MW · 22 15 Oct 2017 · 86 MW · 13 16 Oct 2017 · 69 MW · 17 17 Oct 2017 · 151 MW · 18 18 Oct 2017 · 1 MW · 1
11 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.3 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 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. Formosa 115,901 inhabitants where it started
    5,857 ha reached on 11 Oct
    1.0 %

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)
11 Oct 32.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Oct 33.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Oct 34.0 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Oct 34.9 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Oct 36.7 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Oct 33.8 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Oct 32.0 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Oct 30.7 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Oct after 31.9 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Oct after 33.4 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Oct after 33.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Oct after 34.2 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Oct after 33.2 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Oct after 32.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Oct after 33.8 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Oct after 34.2 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Oct after 34.9 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Oct after 29.4 °C 48 % 34 km/h 12.3 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2017
After · 25 Oct 2017

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 · 168Every 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 Formosa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2017 and 18 October 2017: 8 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 5,814 hectares (58.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Formosa (5,857 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

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. 168 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.