Luciara fire, 20 August 2026 Luciara, Porto Alegre do Norte
The fire started on 20 August 2026 in Luciara, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,888 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 546th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 138 in Brazil in 2026, of 749.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,888ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 20 Aug 2026 – 27 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 199
- in a single hotspot: 122 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 538MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.7 mm on 4 Sept.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,102 ha in 2016, 5,827 ha in 2017, 1,371 ha in 2019, 682 ha in 2020, 80 ha in 2021, 545 ha in 2022, 4,349 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,063 ha that had burned before.
- 5,827 ha Luciara fire, September 2017 91,556 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,437 ha Luciara fire, September 2024 4,638 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 497 ha Luciara fire, September 2019 6,136 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 185 ha Luciara fire, September 2016 5,635 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 130 ha Luciara fire, September 2020 13,602 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
8,917 ha reached on 20 Aug2.1 %
-
Porto Alegre do Norte 12,127 inhabitants22 ha0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 38.8 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 21 Aug | 39.9 °C | 15 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Aug | 39.5 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Aug | 37.8 °C | 22 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 24 Aug | 40.2 °C | 19 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Aug | 41.1 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 26 Aug | 39.5 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 27 Aug | 39.0 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 28 Aug after | 39.3 °C | 24 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 29 Aug after | 39.0 °C | 26 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 Aug after | 38.7 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 31 Aug after | 38.7 °C | 29 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Sept after | 40.5 °C | 21 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Sept after | 38.5 °C | 29 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 3 Sept after | 38.5 °C | 31 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Sept after | 35.2 °C | 47 % | 36 km/h | 12.7 mm | Low 8 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 24 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 199Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Luciara fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2026 and 27 August 2026: 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 8,888 hectares (88.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luciara (8,917 ha, 2.1 %); Porto Alegre do Norte (22 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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
Satellite cross-check
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
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. 199 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.
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.