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Mansidão fire, 10 October 2023 Mansidão

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2023, 16:24 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2023 in Mansidão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,730 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 164th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 103 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Burnt area
6,730ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
10 Oct 2023 – 14 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Oct
2023
Heat detections
192
in a single hotspot: 289 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
6.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Oct 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct14 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
40km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,560 ha in 2018, 35 ha in 2019, 3,785 ha in 2021, 16 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,424 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mansidão 13,919 inhabitants where it started
    6,778 ha reached on 10 Oct
    2.2 %

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)
10 Oct 39.0 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Oct 38.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Oct 38.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Oct 39.9 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct 39.6 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Oct after 38.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Oct after 37.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Oct after 37.8 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Oct after 38.7 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct after 39.8 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Oct after 39.4 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Oct after 39.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Oct after 38.8 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Oct after 39.1 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Oct after 39.5 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Oct after 36.5 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Oct 2023
After · 21 Oct 2023

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 12 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1042 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
891011121314151617
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 · 192Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mansidão fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2023 and 14 October 2023: 5 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 6,730 hectares (67.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mansidão (6,778 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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
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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 193.

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.