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Formosa do Rio Preto fire, September 2017 Formosa do Rio Preto

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2017, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2017 in Formosa do Rio Preto, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,595 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 87th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 163 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Formosa do Rio Preto · 2021Formosa do Rio Preto · 2021Formosa do Rio Preto · 2026Formosa do Rio Preto · 2026

Burnt area
10,595ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
17 Sept 2017 – 30 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Sept
2017
Heat detections
372
in a single hotspot: 200 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
400MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept30 Sept
30 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2017 · 65 MW · 8 18 Sept 2017 · 809 MW · 27 19 Sept 2017 · 2,197 MW · 50 20 Sept 2017 · 331 MW · 35 21 Sept 2017 · 15 MW · 15 22 Sept 2017 · 21 MW · 4 23 Sept 2017 · 447 MW · 20 24 Sept 2017 · 532 MW · 77 25 Sept 2017 · 499 MW · 58 26 Sept 2017 · 246 MW · 25 27 Sept 2017 · 275 MW · 31 28 Sept 2017 · 5 MW · 3 29 Sept 2017 · 14 MW · 7 30 Sept 2017 · 142 MW · 12
17 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 29 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

35°high
52km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

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

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 6.7% of the area of London (106 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 do Rio Preto 25,899 inhabitants where it started
    10,674 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.7 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
17 Sept 30.5 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 30.6 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept 31.1 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Sept 31.2 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Sept 28.6 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept 29.9 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept 30.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept 30.5 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 30.8 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Sept 31.3 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Sept 32.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept 33.4 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Sept 34.6 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept 34.2 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Oct after 33.4 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Oct after 34.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Oct after 32.7 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Oct after 34.3 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct after 33.0 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Oct after 32.2 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Oct after 33.0 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Oct after 32.8 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Oct after 32.6 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Oct after 33.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2017
After · 7 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 · 372Every 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 do Rio Preto fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2017 and 30 September 2017: 14 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 10,595 hectares (106.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Formosa do Rio Preto (10,674 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 372 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 2015, 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.