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Júlio Borges fire, August 2022 Júlio Borges, Parnaguá

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2022, 04:40 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2022 in Júlio Borges, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,550 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 66th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 66 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parnaguá · 2019Parnaguá · 2021Júlio Borges · 2018Curimatá · 2022

Burnt area
13,550ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
18 Aug 2022 – 18 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
18 Aug
2022
Heat detections
699
in a single hotspot: 164 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
183MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2022 · 12 MW · 1 19 Aug 2022 · 56 MW · 5 20 Aug 2022 · 18 MW · 7 21 Aug 2022 · 49 MW · 2 23 Aug 2022 · 3 MW · 2 24 Aug 2022 · 24 MW · 2 25 Aug 2022 · 21 MW · 2 26 Aug 2022 · 620 MW · 9 27 Aug 2022 · 114 MW · 17 28 Aug 2022 · 67 MW · 14 29 Aug 2022 · 679 MW · 39 30 Aug 2022 · 848 MW · 82 31 Aug 2022 · 131 MW · 36 1 Sept 2022 · 249 MW · 50 2 Sept 2022 · 166 MW · 27 3 Sept 2022 · 269 MW · 40 4 Sept 2022 · 722 MW · 71 5 Sept 2022 · 207 MW · 27 6 Sept 2022 · 207 MW · 33 7 Sept 2022 · 141 MW · 28 8 Sept 2022 · 100 MW · 51 9 Sept 2022 · 124 MW · 36 10 Sept 2022 · 314 MW · 31 11 Sept 2022 · 169 MW · 24 12 Sept 2022 · 99 MW · 23 13 Sept 2022 · 167 MW · 16 14 Sept 2022 · 12 MW · 7 15 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 7 16 Sept 2022 · 12 MW · 2 17 Sept 2022 · 48 MW · 7 18 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 1
18 Aug 24 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 8 Sept 13 Sept 18 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 24 Sept.

This area had burned before

54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,318 ha in 2018, 4,517 ha in 2019, 335 ha in 2020, 360 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.6% of the area of London (136 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. Júlio Borges 5,388 inhabitants where it started
    7,637 ha reached on 18 Aug
    5.9 %
  2. Parnaguá 10,103 inhabitants
    6,001 ha reached on 30 Aug
    1.7 %

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)
18 Aug 32.2 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug 32.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Aug 30.8 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Aug 31.2 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Aug 30.4 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Aug 31.9 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Aug 32.9 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Aug 32.3 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Aug 32.3 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Aug 31.8 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Aug 32.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Aug 33.3 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug 32.5 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 Aug 30.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Sept 30.6 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Sept 32.7 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Sept 33.1 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 33.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 33.7 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 Sept 33.0 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Sept 32.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Sept 32.8 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 32.9 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Sept 33.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 35.5 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 35.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept 35.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Sept 36.0 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 35.8 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 35.2 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 35.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept 34.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept after 33.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Sept after 34.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept after 33.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
22 Sept after 33.9 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45
23 Sept after 34.7 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
24 Sept after 33.8 °C 35 % 25 km/h 5.4 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Aug 2022
After · 25 Sept 2022

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 11 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.20
171819202122232425262728293031123456789101112131415161718
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 · 699Every 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 Júlio Borges fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 August 2022 to 18 September 2022 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 August 2022 to 15 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,550 hectares (135.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Júlio Borges (7,637 ha, 5.9 %); Parnaguá (6,001 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 · 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: 15 September 2022 → 18 September 2022.
  2. Start date: 19 August 2022 → 18 August 2022.

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 193.

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 19 August 2022 to 15 September 2022. 699 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.