How long did the Formosa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2022 and 23 January 2022: 15 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 9,148 hectares (91.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Formosa (9,188 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.

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 · 2022-01-09 → 2022-01-23

Formosa fire, 9 January 2022 Formosa

Out · last detection 23 Jan 2022, 18:14 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2022 in Formosa, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,148 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 30 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Formosa · 2020 Formosa · 2021 Formosa · 2020 Formosa · 2020

Burnt area: 9,148ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 9 Jan 2022 – 23 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 9 Jan; 2022
Heat detections: 438; in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 399MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan23 Jan

Play back 23 Jan 2022

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jan 12 Jan 15 Jan 18 Jan 21 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

70km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.9 mm on 27 Jan.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,866 ha in 2020, 237 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,942 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (91 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

Formosa where it started

9,188 ha reached on 2 Jan

1.4 %

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)
9 Jan	36.1 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
10 Jan	36.3 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
11 Jan	37.3 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Jan	39.2 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Jan	39.4 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Jan	38.1 °C	33 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Jan	39.3 °C	29 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Jan	41.3 °C	24 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
17 Jan	41.7 °C	23 %	70 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
18 Jan	40.7 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Jan	40.0 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Jan	39.2 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	High 34
21 Jan	40.4 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Jan	40.5 °C	27 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
23 Jan	40.9 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Jan after	41.2 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Jan after	39.9 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
26 Jan after	38.9 °C	35 %	45 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 40
27 Jan after	28.9 °C	67 %	45 km/h	16.9 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Jan 2022

After · 30 Jan 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.

Detections table · 438Every 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 Formosa fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2022 and 23 January 2022: 15 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 9,148 hectares (91.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Formosa (9,188 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 438 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