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Juara fire, September 2020 Juara

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2020, 17:40 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2020 in Juara, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,475 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 975th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 459 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
5,475ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
9 Sept 2020 – 16 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2020
Heat detections
199
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Sept 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept16 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

910111213141516

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
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,166 ha in 2016, 28 ha in 2018, 4,527 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,027 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Juara 34,906 inhabitants where it started
    5,497 ha reached on 9 Sept
    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)
9 Sept 37.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept 36.8 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept 35.5 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept 35.1 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 36.5 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Sept 36.0 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Sept 36.6 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Sept 36.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Sept after 35.6 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept after 34.4 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Sept after 34.8 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept after 30.3 °C 58 % 27 km/h 3.0 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2020
After · 23 Sept 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 · 199Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Juara fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2020 and 16 September 2020: 8 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 5,475 hectares (54.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Juara (5,497 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

Satellite cross-check

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 193.

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.