How long did the Gaúcha do Norte fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 August 2021 to 27 August 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 August 2021 to 25 August 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,249 hectares (102.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gaúcha do Norte (10,327 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2021-08-13 → 2021-08-27

Gaúcha do Norte fire, 13 August 2021 Gaúcha do Norte

Out · last detection 27 Aug 2021, 16:31 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2021 in Gaúcha do Norte, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,249 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 457th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 161 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gaúcha do Norte · 2016 Gaúcha do Norte · 2016 Gaúcha do Norte · 2018 Gaúcha do Norte · 2016

Burnt area: 10,249ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 13 Aug 2021 – 27 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 13 Aug; 2021
Heat detections: 363; in a single hotspot: 185 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 476MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug27 Aug

Play back 27 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

13 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 25 Aug

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

39km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,318 ha in 2016, 1,884 ha in 2017, 1,234 ha in 2018, 752 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,191 ha that had burned before.

2,885 ha Gaúcha do Norte fire, July 2016 3,871 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (102 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

Gaúcha do Norte 8,642 inhabitants where it started

10,327 ha reached on 13 Aug

0.6 %

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	Danger (FWI)
13 Aug	35.7 °C	23 %	27 km/h	High 37
14 Aug	35.3 °C	26 %	20 km/h	High 35
15 Aug	36.1 °C	22 %	24 km/h	High 36
16 Aug	36.3 °C	23 %	32 km/h	High 37
17 Aug	35.9 °C	25 %	35 km/h	Very high 40
18 Aug	35.5 °C	22 %	39 km/h	Very high 43
19 Aug	35.0 °C	24 %	39 km/h	Very high 42
20 Aug	33.9 °C	30 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
21 Aug	35.3 °C	24 %	27 km/h	High 37
22 Aug	35.5 °C	25 %	32 km/h	High 38
23 Aug	36.1 °C	27 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
24 Aug	36.8 °C	24 %	34 km/h	High 38
25 Aug	37.4 °C	26 %	35 km/h	Very high 39
26 Aug	37.8 °C	23 %	20 km/h	High 36
27 Aug	36.9 °C	25 %	31 km/h	Very high 40
28 Aug after	36.3 °C	27 %	33 km/h	Very high 40
29 Aug after	37.0 °C	24 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
30 Aug after	35.3 °C	32 %	37 km/h	Very high 42
31 Aug after	35.7 °C	31 %	32 km/h	Very high 38
1 Sept after	34.8 °C	32 %	26 km/h	High 37
2 Sept after	34.2 °C	42 %	29 km/h	High 30
3 Sept after	33.1 °C	35 %	27 km/h	High 31
4 Sept after	36.3 °C	27 %	31 km/h	High 35
5 Sept after	36.6 °C	29 %	30 km/h	High 35
6 Sept after	36.5 °C	31 %	28 km/h	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Aug 2021

After · 3 Sept 2021

Before After

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 · 363Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 13 August 2021 to 27 August 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 August 2021 to 25 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,249 hectares (102.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gaúcha do Norte (10,327 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 August 2021 → 27 August 2021.
25 October 2026 Start date: 14 August 2021 → 13 August 2021.

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.

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What really happened?

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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 14 August 2021 to 25 August 2021. 363 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.

Where it burned