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Formosa fire, 5 October 2020 Formosa

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2020, 16:48 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2020 in Formosa, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,873 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 207th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 415 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
5,873ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
5 Oct 2020 – 9 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Oct
2020
Heat detections
176
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct9 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

5678910

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
45km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 11 Oct.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 871 ha in 2016, 1,839 ha in 2017, 263 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,719 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Formosa 115,901 inhabitants where it started
    5,923 ha reached on 3 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)
3 Oct 34.8 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Oct 35.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Oct 33.8 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Oct 34.3 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 35.8 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Oct 36.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct 36.8 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Oct after 33.9 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm High 32
11 Oct after 28.3 °C 48 % 30 km/h 2.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Sept 2020
After · 16 Oct 2020

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 · 176Every 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 5 October 2020 and 9 October 2020: 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 5,873 hectares (58.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Formosa (5,923 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.