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Gaúcha do Norte fire, 6 September 2016 Gaúcha do Norte

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2016, 16:49 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2016 in Gaúcha do Norte, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,781 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1526th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 443 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gaúcha do Norte · 2024Gaúcha do Norte · 2024Gaúcha do Norte · 2016Gaúcha do Norte · 2020

Burnt area
3,781ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
6 Sept 2016 – 13 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2016
Heat detections
215
in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
179MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept13 Sept
13 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2016 · 11 MW · 4 7 Sept 2016 · 31 MW · 8 8 Sept 2016 · 16 MW · 3 9 Sept 2016 · 280 MW · 6 10 Sept 2016 · 20 MW · 12 11 Sept 2016 · 474 MW · 73 12 Sept 2016 · 596 MW · 108 13 Sept 2016 · 6 MW · 1
6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 20 Sept.

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 2.4% of the area of London (38 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
    3,799 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
1 Sept 34.9 °C 36 % 29 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 21
2 Sept 34.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 29
3 Sept 34.0 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 32.1 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 35.5 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 34.0 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Sept 36.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Sept 36.1 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 37.7 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Sept 36.6 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 37.4 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 37.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 36.6 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Sept after 35.9 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept after 35.9 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
16 Sept after 37.0 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept after 36.6 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
18 Sept after 34.5 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
19 Sept after 34.2 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
20 Sept after 36.2 °C 35 % 23 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2016
After · 20 Sept 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 · 215Every 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 6 September 2016 and 13 September 2016: 8 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 3,781 hectares (37.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gaúcha do Norte (3,799 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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. 215 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.