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Ledesma fire, 2 October 2020 Ledesma

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2020, 17:49 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2020 in Ledesma, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,641 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Jujuy since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 13 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ledesma · 2022Ledesma · 2022Santa Bárbara · 2021Ledesma · 2020

Burnt area
16,641ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
2 Oct 2020 – 28 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
2 Oct
2020
Heat detections
1,510
in a single hotspot: 142 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
469MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct28 Oct
28 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2020 · 70 MW · 14 3 Oct 2020 · 6 MW · 8 6 Oct 2020 · 23 MW · 4 7 Oct 2020 · 66 MW · 5 8 Oct 2020 · 88 MW · 9 10 Oct 2020 · 883 MW · 38 11 Oct 2020 · 1,057 MW · 222 12 Oct 2020 · 1,197 MW · 247 13 Oct 2020 · 1,122 MW · 83 14 Oct 2020 · 889 MW · 123 17 Oct 2020 · 215 MW · 42 18 Oct 2020 · 652 MW · 67 19 Oct 2020 · 1,013 MW · 181 20 Oct 2020 · 520 MW · 122 21 Oct 2020 · 229 MW · 40 23 Oct 2020 · 264 MW · 35 24 Oct 2020 · 6 MW · 1 26 Oct 2020 · 15 MW · 3 27 Oct 2020 · 353 MW · 89 28 Oct 2020 · 719 MW · 177
2 Oct 7 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct 19 Oct 23 Oct 27 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

42°high
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (166 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. Ledesma where it started
    16,703 ha reached on 2 Oct
    5.6 %

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 area1.9 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
2 Oct 33.3 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Oct 26.3 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Oct 23.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Oct 25.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Oct 29.8 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Oct 35.7 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Oct 37.4 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Oct 32.5 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Oct 34.4 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Oct 36.8 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Oct 34.1 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Oct 34.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Oct 37.1 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 45
15 Oct 28.4 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 35
16 Oct 30.9 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Oct 36.0 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
18 Oct 40.2 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Oct 42.1 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Oct 36.8 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
21 Oct 30.5 °C 43 % 37 km/h 7.3 mm Low 6
22 Oct 34.4 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
23 Oct 37.4 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Oct 37.4 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Oct 40.0 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
26 Oct 33.8 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 45
27 Oct 35.6 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Oct 39.4 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
29 Oct after 23.2 °C 53 % 28 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2020
After · 4 Nov 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 · 1,510Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ledesma fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 October 2020 to 28 October 2020 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2020 to 23 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,641 hectares (166.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ledesma (16,703 ha, 5.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 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: 23 October 2020 → 28 October 2020.
  2. Start date: 6 October 2020 → 2 October 2020.

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 911 · 100.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 October 2020 to 23 October 2020. 1,510 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.