How long did the Lumaco fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 December 2022 and 3 January 2023: 6 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 3,081 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lumaco (3,085 ha, 2.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.2 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CL · Chile · 2022-12-29 → 2023-01-03

Lumaco fire, 29 December 2022 Lumaco

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2023, 18:43 UTC

The fire started on 29 December 2022 in Lumaco, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,081 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Región de La Araucanía since 2016 (of 159 with a page). Number 14 in Chile in 2022, of 51.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lumaco · 2023 Lumaco · 2023 Galvarino · 2023 Traiguén · 2025

Burnt area: 3,081ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 29 Dec 2022 – 3 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 29 Dec; 2022
Heat detections: 212; in a single hotspot: 201 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.0GW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 3 Jan 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Dec3 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

29 Dec 30 Dec 31 Dec 3 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

27°high

52km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Lumaco where it started

3,085 ha reached on 29 Dec

2.8 %

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)
29 Dec	24.5 °C	35 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
30 Dec	27.2 °C	29 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
31 Dec	24.6 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
1 Jan	18.8 °C	55 %	36 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 11
2 Jan	18.3 °C	41 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
3 Jan	21.5 °C	45 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
4 Jan after	25.4 °C	46 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
5 Jan after	24.1 °C	47 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
6 Jan after	25.2 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
7 Jan after	25.3 °C	49 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
8 Jan after	27.3 °C	44 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Jan after	23.0 °C	45 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
10 Jan after	18.9 °C	33 %	43 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
11 Jan after	19.2 °C	33 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
12 Jan after	19.2 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
13 Jan after	21.4 °C	42 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Dec 2022

After · 10 Jan 2023

Before After

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 31 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1035 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

2728293031123456

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 · 212Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lumaco fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 December 2022 and 3 January 2023: 6 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 3,081 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lumaco (3,085 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.2 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (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: 130 (CONAF) · 132

CONAF · Corporación Nacional Forestal ↗
SENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

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. 212 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 ADM3 (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.

Where it burned