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Lizarda fire, 26 September 2022 Lizarda

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2022, 04:40 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2022 in Lizarda, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,173 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 565th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 280 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lizarda · 2020Lizarda · 2025Lizarda · 2025Lizarda · 2020

Burnt area
5,173ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
26 Sept 2022 – 3 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Sept
2022
Heat detections
177
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
194MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept3 Oct
4 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 2022 · 75 MW · 9 27 Sept 2022 · 165 MW · 7 28 Sept 2022 · 266 MW · 10 29 Sept 2022 · 145 MW · 15 30 Sept 2022 · 394 MW · 37 1 Oct 2022 · 516 MW · 53 2 Oct 2022 · 183 MW · 24 3 Oct 2022 · 4 MW · 1 4 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 1
26 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 4 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

38°high
48km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 38 ha in 2016, 1,500 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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. Lizarda 2,999 inhabitants where it started
    5,206 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.9 %

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)
26 Sept 34.9 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Sept 36.3 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Sept 37.1 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Sept 37.9 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Sept 38.3 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Oct 38.2 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct 38.3 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Oct 37.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Oct after 37.2 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Oct after 38.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Oct after 37.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Oct after 36.1 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Oct after 37.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Oct after 36.0 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.8 mm High 27
10 Oct after 36.8 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Oct after 35.9 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Oct after 36.9 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Oct after 37.0 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Oct after 38.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct after 36.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Oct after 36.3 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2022
After · 10 Oct 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 4 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1086 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
24252627282930123456
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 · 177Every 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 Lizarda fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 September 2022 and 3 October 2022: 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 5,173 hectares (51.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lizarda (5,206 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 177 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.