How long did the General Taboada fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 July 2016 and 28 July 2016: 3 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 1,756 hectares (17.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered General Taboada (1,765 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AR · Argentina · 2016-07-26 → 2016-07-28

General Taboada fire, July 2016 General Taboada

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2016, 18:26 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2016 in General Taboada, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,756 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 210th largest in Santiago del Estero since 2016 (of 320 with a page). Number 193 in Argentina in 2016, of 255.

Compare with…

Suggestions: General Taboada · 2018 General Taboada · 2021 General Taboada · 2025 General Taboada · 2025

Burnt area: 1,756ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 26 Jul 2016 – 28 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 26 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 59; in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 644MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul28 Jul

Play back 27 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jul 27 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

19°high

47km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 6 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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

General Taboada where it started

1,765 ha reached on 26 Jul

0.3 %

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)
26 Jul	18.7 °C	30 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
27 Jul	14.3 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
28 Jul	17.5 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
29 Jul after	21.1 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
30 Jul after	25.1 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
31 Jul after	24.9 °C	46 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Aug after	20.1 °C	40 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 Aug after	19.5 °C	40 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
3 Aug after	22.2 °C	42 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
4 Aug after	29.8 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Aug after	30.5 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Aug after	21.1 °C	36 %	50 km/h	3.3 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jul 2016

After · 4 Aug 2016

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 · 59Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the General Taboada fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 July 2016 and 28 July 2016: 3 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 1,756 hectares (17.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered General Taboada (1,765 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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 911 · 100.

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. 59 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.

Where it burned