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Gaúcha do Norte fire, 30 August 2020 Gaúcha do Norte, Paranatinga

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2020, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2020 in Gaúcha do Norte, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,061 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 726th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 327 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
7,061ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
30 Aug 2020 – 19 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 Aug
2020
Heat detections
349
in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
368MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug19 Sept
19 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2020 · 162 MW · 8 2 Sept 2020 · 544 MW · 17 3 Sept 2020 · 49 MW · 1 4 Sept 2020 · 15 MW · 3 6 Sept 2020 · 17 MW · 7 7 Sept 2020 · 31 MW · 8 8 Sept 2020 · 135 MW · 12 9 Sept 2020 · 5 MW · 1 11 Sept 2020 · 1,055 MW · 57 12 Sept 2020 · 1,508 MW · 83 13 Sept 2020 · 942 MW · 60 14 Sept 2020 · 110 MW · 36 16 Sept 2020 · 1,057 MW · 23 17 Sept 2020 · 116 MW · 14 18 Sept 2020 · 96 MW · 13 19 Sept 2020 · 43 MW · 6
1 Sept 4 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 16 Sept 19 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

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.8 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 910 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 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
    7,032 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Paranatinga 26,423 inhabitants
    51 ha
    0.0 %

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.

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)
30 Aug 35.8 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Aug 35.9 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Sept 35.6 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Sept 35.5 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Sept 34.8 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Sept 35.5 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 35.6 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 37.0 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept 35.7 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Sept 36.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 36.0 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 36.7 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 36.6 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept 36.6 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 35.8 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 34.7 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 35.7 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 34.6 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Sept 35.2 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Sept 37.3 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Sept 35.7 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Sept after 34.6 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept after 34.8 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
22 Sept after 28.3 °C 69 % 31 km/h 8.8 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2020
After · 26 Sept 2020

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 · 349Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2020 to 19 September 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2020 to 19 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,061 hectares (70.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gaúcha do Norte (7,032 ha, 0.4 %); Paranatinga (51 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 1 September 2020 → 30 August 2020.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2020 to 19 September 2020. 349 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.