How long did the Gualeguay fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 January 2022 and 15 January 2022: 10 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 1,506 hectares (15.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gualeguay (1,519 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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.

AR · Argentina · 2022-01-06 → 2022-01-15

Gualeguay fire, January 2022 Gualeguay

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2022, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 6 January 2022 in Gualeguay, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,506 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 210th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 441 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gualeguay · 2021 Gualeguay · 2021 Gualeguay · 2021 Gualeguay · 2022

Burnt area: 1,506ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 6 Jan 2022 – 15 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 6 Jan; 2022
Heat detections: 97; in a single hotspot: 103 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 77MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 15 Jan 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jan15 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jan 8 Jan 10 Jan 12 Jan 14 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high

44km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.3 mm on 16 Jan.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 485 ha in 2020, 2,732 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,255 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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

Gualeguay where it started

1,519 ha reached on 6 Jan

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
6 Jan	30.4 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Jan	31.0 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
8 Jan	31.5 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 Jan	33.9 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
10 Jan	36.9 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Jan	40.3 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Jan	37.9 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 Jan	40.5 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Jan	42.2 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jan	39.3 °C	35 %	44 km/h	3.3 mm	Moderate 20
16 Jan after	32.2 °C	51 %	35 km/h	10.3 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Dec 2021

After · 22 Jan 2022

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 · 97Every 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 Gualeguay fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 January 2022 and 15 January 2022: 10 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 1,506 hectares (15.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gualeguay (1,519 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 97 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