Magdalena fire, 29 August 2022 Magdalena
The fire started on 29 August 2022 in Magdalena, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,384 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 72th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 902 with a page). Number 21 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 16,384ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 29 Aug 2022 – 15 Sept 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 582
- in a single hotspot: 247 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 652MW
- 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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 22 Sept.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,901 ha in 2016, 1,626 ha in 2017, 892 ha in 2018, 271 ha in 2019, 10,289 ha in 2020, 7,092 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,238 ha that had burned before.
- 4,519 ha Magdalena fire, September 2021 23,784 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,050 ha Magdalena fire, November 2020 5,422 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,930 ha Magdalena fire, September 2020 7,434 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 26 ha Magdalena fire, September 2020 20,502 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
-
16,506 ha1.2 %
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 Aug | 27.8 °C | 37 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Aug | 30.5 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Aug | 35.0 °C | 33 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 1 Sept | 35.3 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Sept | 35.6 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Sept | 31.0 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Sept | 30.3 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Sept | 32.2 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 6 Sept | 33.3 °C | 30 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Sept | 35.1 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 8 Sept | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Sept | 36.3 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 30 |
| 10 Sept | 29.1 °C | 53 % | 32 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 11 Sept | 29.7 °C | 51 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 12 Sept | 34.9 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 13 Sept | 35.0 °C | 42 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Sept | 30.6 °C | 48 % | 40 km/h | 2.4 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 15 Sept | 26.6 °C | 38 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 16 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Sept after | 35.0 °C | 37 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 18 Sept after | 36.1 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Sept after | 35.3 °C | 44 % | 33 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 38 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 22 Sept after | 33.9 °C | 46 % | 34 km/h | 4.1 mm | Low 10 |
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 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 152 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 78: 5.2 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 · 582Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 134,466 haBaures10 August 2024 · 73 days · 12 km away
- 21,879 haMagdalena8 October 2025 · 19 days · 13 km away
- 20,502 haMagdalena25 September 2020 · 11 days · 16 km away
- 23,784 haMagdalena16 September 2021 · 19 days · 18 km away
- 30,869 haBaures24 October 2023 · 27 days · 21 km away
- 25,480 haMagdalena19 September 2021 · 16 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Magdalena fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2022 and 15 September 2022: 18 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 16,384 hectares (163.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Magdalena (16,506 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bolivia (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: 119 · 110
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. 582 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 ADM3 (Public Domain). 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.