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Formosa fire, 14 January 2022 Formosa

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

The fire started on 14 January 2022 in Formosa, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,919 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 178th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 163 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Formosa · 2020Formosa · 2022Pirané · 2022Formosa · 2020

Burnt area
2,919ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
14 Jan 2022 – 24 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
14 Jan
2022
Heat detections
141
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
246MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jan24 Jan
23 Jan 2022

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jan 2022 · 30 MW · 2 15 Jan 2022 · 2 MW · 1 16 Jan 2022 · 368 MW · 17 17 Jan 2022 · 1,614 MW · 89 18 Jan 2022 · 2 MW · 2 19 Jan 2022 · 156 MW · 8 20 Jan 2022 · 47 MW · 3 21 Jan 2022 · 2 MW · 1 22 Jan 2022 · 79 MW · 11 23 Jan 2022 · 163 MW · 7
14 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 18 Jan 20 Jan 22 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

41°high
66km/h · peak gust
25%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 26 Jan.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 825 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (29 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 where it started
    2,932 ha reached on 14 Jan
    0.4 %

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)
15 Jan 38.6 °C 31 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Jan 40.7 °C 26 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Jan 41.2 °C 25 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jan 39.8 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Jan 38.8 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
20 Jan 38.4 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
21 Jan 39.2 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
22 Jan 39.5 °C 30 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Jan 40.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
24 Jan 40.1 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
25 Jan after 39.4 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jan after 38.5 °C 36 % 39 km/h 2.2 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jan 2022
After · 31 Jan 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.

Detections table · 141Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Formosa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 January 2022 to 24 January 2022 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2022 to 23 January 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,919 hectares (29.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Formosa (2,932 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 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: 23 January 2022 → 24 January 2022.
  2. Start date: 15 January 2022 → 14 January 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 911 · 100.

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 15 January 2022 to 23 January 2022. 141 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.