How long did the Gualeguay fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2022 and 24 August 2022: 5 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 1,847 hectares (18.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gualeguay (1,862 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

AR · Argentina · 2022-08-20 → 2022-08-24

Gualeguay fire, 20 August 2022 Gualeguay

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2022, 18:18 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2022 in Gualeguay, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,847 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 149th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 313 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 1,847ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 20 Aug 2022 – 24 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 20 Aug; 2022
Heat detections: 103; in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 305MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug24 Aug

Play back 24 Aug 2022

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 21 Aug 22 Aug 24 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

27°high

38km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 26 Aug.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,088 ha in 2020, 1,331 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,413 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% 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

Gualeguay where it started

1,862 ha reached on 19 Aug

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)
20 Aug	18.9 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
21 Aug	19.4 °C	28 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Aug	18.7 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
23 Aug	22.6 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Aug	27.0 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
25 Aug after	26.0 °C	45 %	17 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
26 Aug after	26.5 °C	54 %	42 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Aug 2022

After · 31 Aug 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 360 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 161: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak360 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10514 µg/m³

Optical depth1.83

WHO 15

18192021222324252627

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 103Every 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 20 August 2022 and 24 August 2022: 5 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 1,847 hectares (18.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gualeguay (1,862 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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 ›

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

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 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. 103 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