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Los Laureles fire, January 2022 Los Laureles

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2022, 17:54 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2022 in Los Laureles, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,279 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 34th largest in Ñeembucú since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 91 in Paraguay in 2022, of 185.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villalbin · 2023Itatí · 2023Tacuaras · 2023

Burnt area
2,279ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
15 Jan 2022 – 24 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Jan
2022
Heat detections
93
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
107MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan24 Jan
24 Jan 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2022 · 1 MW · 1 16 Jan 2022 · 12 MW · 1 17 Jan 2022 · 2 MW · 1 20 Jan 2022 · 57 MW · 8 21 Jan 2022 · 65 MW · 6 22 Jan 2022 · 205 MW · 22 23 Jan 2022 · 442 MW · 51 24 Jan 2022 · 70 MW · 3
15 Jan 17 Jan 21 Jan 23 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
65km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 1.4% of the area of London (23 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. Los Laureles where it started
    2,289 ha reached on 15 Jan
    2.7 %

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 area0.37 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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)
15 Jan 39.0 °C 31 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
16 Jan 41.3 °C 25 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Jan 40.5 °C 27 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Jan 39.8 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Jan 40.2 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Jan 39.7 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
21 Jan 40.3 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Jan 40.4 °C 26 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Jan 41.1 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jan 40.9 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
25 Jan after 39.8 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm High 37
26 Jan after 37.6 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
27 Jan after 29.8 °C 58 % 54 km/h 0.8 mm High 27
28 Jan after 33.2 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Jan after 33.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Jan after 36.4 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Jan after 38.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Feb after 40.6 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Feb after 41.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Feb after 34.8 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2022
After · 31 Jan 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.

Detections table · 93Every 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 Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Los Laureles fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2022 to 24 January 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2022 to 24 January 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,279 hectares (22.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Los Laureles (2,289 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (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: 132 · 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 20 January 2022 → 15 January 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 132 · 911.

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 20 January 2022 to 24 January 2022. 93 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.