Burned area
satellite only6,622ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 12 Sept 2024 – 26 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BO · Bolivia · –
Magdalena fire, 12 September 2024 San Ramón, Magdalena, San Joaquín
Out · last detection 26 Sept 2024, 18:22 UTC
The fire started on 12 September 2024 in Magdalena, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,622 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 283th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 859 with a page). Number 121 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only15days
12 Sept 2024 to 26 Sept 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 26 Sept 2024, 18:22 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only12 Sept 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 12 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only237
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 148 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 12 Sept 2024 – 26 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,366MW
Total radiative power on 21 September 2024; hotspots that day: 60.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 21 Sept 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model32.6FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 34.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 12 Sept 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model38.1°C · 36% RH
High of 38.1 °C and minimum humidity of 36% on 20 September 2024; gusts of 35 km/h on 15 September 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 12 Sept 2024 – 26 Sept 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 25 September 2024 → 26 September 2024.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logStart date: 17 September 2024 → 12 September 2024.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/magdalena-2024-09-5?v=2026-11-05A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire magdalena-2024-09-5.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 37.4 | 26.2 | 43 | 10.5 | 32 | 0.1 | 32.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 37.4 | 25.1 | 36 | 10.3 | 27 | 0 | 32.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-14 | 3 | 11 | 37.2 | 24.5 | 38 | 11.7 | 25.2 | 0.6 | 30.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-15 | 0 | 0 | 29.5 | 23.9 | 51 | 15.1 | 35.3 | 0 | 23.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-16 | 0 | 0 | 31.2 | 21.2 | 42 | 13.9 | 32.8 | 0 | 30.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-17 | 6 | 31 | 34.6 | 21.4 | 39 | 11.4 | 22 | 0 | 22.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-18 | 4 | 24 | 36.2 | 23 | 38 | 6.9 | 23.8 | 0 | 25.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-19 | 30 | 106 | 36.8 | 24.7 | 37 | 11.9 | 35.3 | 0 | 32.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-20 | 74 | 1,001 | 38.1 | 26.1 | 36 | 9.9 | 30.2 | 0 | 31.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-21 | 60 | 1,366 | 37.4 | 25.1 | 37 | 7.9 | 24.1 | 0 | 30.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-22 | 23 | 68 | 38 | 25.7 | 34 | 9.7 | 26.6 | 0 | 33.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-23 | 19 | 127 | 37.9 | 26.4 | 34 | 12.8 | 34.2 | 0 | 38.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-24 | 9 | 44 | 37.4 | 26.2 | 37 | 10.4 | 31 | 0 | 34.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-25 | 7 | 50 | 38.1 | 26 | 36 | 11.8 | 31 | 0.2 | 37.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-26 | 2 | 4 | 37.1 | 26.1 | 39 | 17.2 | 27.4 | 0.5 | 31.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-09-27 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 22.9 | 49 | 17.4 | 40.7 | 3.9 | 8.2 | bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,622ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 12 Sept 2024 – 26 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 237
- in a single hotspot: 148 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 258MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
12 Sept26 Sept
26 Sept 2024
How it evolved, day by day
14 Sept
21 Sept
25 Sept
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
35km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity
It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 27 Sept.
This area had burned before
42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 312 ha in 2016, 380 ha in 2018, 1,074 ha in 2019, 166 ha in 2020, 1,746 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,774 ha that had burned before.
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
-
San Ramón 5,489 inhabitants5,123 ha reached on 14 Sept0.6 %
-
1,393 ha reached on 14 Sept0.1 %
-
San Joaquín 6,808 inhabitants129 ha reached on 20 Sept0.0 %
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 2025Built-up area0.14 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Sept | 37.4 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Sept | 37.4 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 14 Sept | 37.2 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Sept | 29.5 °C | 51 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 16 Sept | 31.2 °C | 42 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Sept | 34.6 °C | 39 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Sept | 36.2 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 19 Sept | 36.8 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 20 Sept | 38.1 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 21 Sept | 37.4 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Sept | 38.0 °C | 34 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 23 Sept | 37.9 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 24 Sept | 37.4 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Sept | 38.1 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 38 |
| 26 Sept | 37.1 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Sept after | 30.0 °C | 49 % | 41 km/h | 3.9 mm | Low 8 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 32.6, a minimum humidity of 43% and 34 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2022: 3.
FWI at the start
32.6
Minimum humidity
43 %
Days without rain
34
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Magdalena fire, 12 September 2024
6,622 ha
15 days
FWI 32.6
Min. humidity 43 %
San Ramón fire, July 2024
3,293 ha
7 days
FWI 32.1
Min. humidity 35 %
71 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Exaltación fire, July 2024
5,034 ha
21 days
FWI 32.3
Min. humidity 36 %
164 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.2 mm on 7 Aug.
Santa Ana fire, July 2024
6,879 ha
9 days
FWI 30.3
Min. humidity 34 %
184 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 7 Aug.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 3. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
3.9 mmfirst rain
27 Septthe day after it ended
35km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 26 Sept, and on 27 Sept 3.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2022.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 5 Sept 2024
After · 3 Oct 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 19 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 175 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 160: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak175 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10252 µg/m³
Optical depth4.80
WHO 15
12 Sept16 Sept20 Sept24 Sept28 Sept
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 · 237Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Magdalena fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2024 to 26 September 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2024 to 25 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,622 hectares (66.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: San Ramón (5,123 ha, 0.6 %); Magdalena (1,393 ha, 0.1 %); San Joaquín (129 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 25 September 2024 → 26 September 2024.
- Start date: 17 September 2024 → 12 September 2024.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2024 to 25 September 2024. 237 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.