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Goya fire, 27 July 2020 Goya

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2020, 18:12 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2020 in Goya, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,111 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 51th largest in Corrientes since 2016 (of 203 with a page). Number 129 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: General Obligado · 2020General Obligado · 2020General Obligado · 2020Goya · 2020

Burnt area
4,111ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
27 Jul 2020 – 13 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
27 Jul
2020
Heat detections
250
in a single hotspot: 191 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
283MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul13 Aug
13 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 2020 · 102 MW · 4 28 Jul 2020 · 11 MW · 3 29 Jul 2020 · 66 MW · 8 30 Jul 2020 · 46 MW · 9 31 Jul 2020 · 6 MW · 2 2 Aug 2020 · 41 MW · 2 3 Aug 2020 · 703 MW · 38 4 Aug 2020 · 1,177 MW · 55 5 Aug 2020 · 1,644 MW · 95 6 Aug 2020 · 136 MW · 24 8 Aug 2020 · 5 MW · 2 9 Aug 2020 · 16 MW · 4 10 Aug 2020 · 2 MW · 2 13 Aug 2020 · 11 MW · 2
27 Jul 29 Jul 31 Jul 3 Aug 5 Aug 8 Aug 10 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

34°high
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days 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 2.6% of the area of London (41 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. Goya where it started
    4,115 ha reached on 27 Jul
    0.9 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Jul 22.3 °C 53 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
1 Aug 29.9 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Aug 31.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Aug 31.4 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Aug 31.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Aug 33.5 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug 31.6 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Aug 26.1 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
8 Aug 30.6 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Aug 32.1 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug 30.1 °C 29 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug 17.1 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Aug 16.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Aug 19.9 °C 45 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Aug after 19.9 °C 57 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
15 Aug after 19.9 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Aug after 21.6 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2020
After · 20 Aug 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 · 250Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Goya fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2020 to 13 August 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 July 2020 to 6 August 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,111 hectares (41.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Goya (4,115 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 6 August 2020 → 13 August 2020.
  2. Start date: 31 July 2020 → 27 July 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 911 · 100.

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 31 July 2020 to 6 August 2020. 250 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.