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Lagoa do Mato fire, September 2025 Lagoa do Mato

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2025, 04:42 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2025 in Lagoa do Mato, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,696 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 405th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 523 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barão de Grajaú · 2025Lagoa do Mato · 2018Passagem Franca · 2023São Francisco do Maranhão · 2022

Burnt area
3,696ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
23 Sept 2025 – 12 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Sept
2025
Heat detections
135
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
64MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept12 Oct
12 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2025 · 5 MW · 1 25 Sept 2025 · 10 MW · 3 26 Sept 2025 · 14 MW · 3 27 Sept 2025 · 36 MW · 14 28 Sept 2025 · 375 MW · 21 29 Sept 2025 · 123 MW · 31 30 Sept 2025 · 4 MW · 1 1 Oct 2025 · 43 MW · 11 2 Oct 2025 · 28 MW · 6 3 Oct 2025 · 23 MW · 8 4 Oct 2025 · 104 MW · 19 5 Oct 2025 · 65 MW · 16 12 Oct 2025 · 2 MW · 1
23 Sept 26 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 12 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 37 ha in 2021, 10 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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. Lagoa do Mato 10,572 inhabitants where it started
    3,721 ha reached on 23 Sept
    2.4 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.49 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Sept 36.5 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept 36.4 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept 36.2 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept 36.0 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
22 Sept 34.9 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
23 Sept 36.8 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Sept 36.2 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Sept 35.9 °C 28 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept 35.4 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept 35.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept 34.8 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Sept 35.1 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Sept 36.0 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Oct 35.7 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct 36.3 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Oct 35.0 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Oct 35.9 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Oct 35.8 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 36.1 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Oct 36.7 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Oct 36.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
9 Oct 36.2 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
10 Oct 36.7 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Oct 36.7 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 36.6 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Oct after 36.0 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
14 Oct after 36.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Oct after 37.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Oct after 37.1 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Oct after 37.0 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Oct after 36.1 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Oct after 36.1 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Oct after 33.4 °C 46 % 31 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2025
After · 19 Oct 2025

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 6 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.41
2324252627282930123456789
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 · 135Every 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 Lagoa do Mato fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2025 to 12 October 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2025 to 6 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,696 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lagoa do Mato (3,721 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 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 October 2025 → 12 October 2025.
  2. Start date: 25 September 2025 → 23 September 2025.

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 25 September 2025 to 6 October 2025. 135 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 2025, 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.