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Gaúcha do Norte fire, 16 July 2016 Gaúcha do Norte

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2016, 17:08 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2016 in Gaúcha do Norte, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,003 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 734th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 168 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gaúcha do Norte · 2018Paranatinga · 2019

Burnt area
7,003ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
16 Jul 2016 – 26 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Jul
2016
Heat detections
486
in a single hotspot: 196 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
975MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul26 Jul
26 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2016 · 130 MW · 6 17 Jul 2016 · 99 MW · 15 18 Jul 2016 · 32 MW · 3 19 Jul 2016 · 281 MW · 18 20 Jul 2016 · 308 MW · 30 21 Jul 2016 · 1,447 MW · 46 22 Jul 2016 · 1,301 MW · 60 23 Jul 2016 · 5,289 MW · 185 24 Jul 2016 · 74 MW · 33 25 Jul 2016 · 1,606 MW · 38 26 Jul 2016 · 155 MW · 39
16 Jul 18 Jul 20 Jul 22 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 26 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
23%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 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Gaúcha do Norte 8,642 inhabitants where it started
    7,056 ha reached on 16 Jul
    0.4 %

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)
16 Jul 33.4 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 30.4 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul 31.9 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Jul 32.8 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jul 32.9 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 33.4 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul 33.0 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Jul 34.2 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul 33.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jul 32.9 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jul 32.9 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul after 32.9 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jul after 33.6 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul after 34.0 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Jul after 33.8 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Jul after 32.5 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug after 32.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug after 33.0 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Aug after 33.5 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Aug after 34.5 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug after 34.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Aug after 34.0 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Aug after 34.7 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Aug after 35.7 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug after 36.1 °C 22 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug after 34.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Aug after 35.4 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 35.2 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2016
After · 2 Aug 2016

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 · 486Every 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 Gaúcha do Norte fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 July 2016 and 26 July 2016: 11 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 7,003 hectares (70.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gaúcha do Norte (7,056 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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. 486 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.