Marcos Parente fire, August 2017 Landri Sales, Antônio Almeida, Marcos Parente
The fire started on 18 August 2017 in Marcos Parente, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,486 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 632th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 790 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,486ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 18 Aug 2017 – 26 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- municipalities
- Started on
- 18 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 164
- in a single hotspot: 124 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 192MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 504 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 476 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
-
Landri Sales 5,213 inhabitants2,743 ha reached on 15 Aug2.5 %
-
Antônio Almeida 3,152 inhabitants448 ha reached on 24 Aug0.7 %
-
244 ha reached on 13 Aug0.4 %
-
Porto Alegre do Piauí 4,320 inhabitants72 ha reached on 14 Aug0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Aug | 34.6 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Aug | 35.5 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Aug | 35.1 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 16 Aug | 33.7 °C | 33 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 Aug | 34.2 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 18 Aug | 34.6 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Aug | 35.4 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Aug | 34.3 °C | 38 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Aug | 34.9 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Aug | 34.7 °C | 27 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Aug | 33.1 °C | 31 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Aug | 32.6 °C | 34 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 25 Aug | 33.8 °C | 32 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Aug | 34.7 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Aug after | 34.1 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 28 Aug after | 35.2 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Aug after | 35.4 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Aug after | 35.7 °C | 22 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 31 Aug after | 36.4 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Sept after | 36.0 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Sept after | 34.2 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 3 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 25 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 4 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 32 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 31 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 6 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 30 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Sept after | 33.9 °C | 32 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 9 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 26 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 10 Sept after | 34.9 °C | 28 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 11 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 32 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
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.
Detections table · 164Every 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 Marcos Parente fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 August 2017 and 26 August 2017: 9 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 3,486 hectares (34.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Landri Sales (2,743 ha, 2.5 %); Antônio Almeida (448 ha, 0.7 %); Marcos Parente (244 ha, 0.4 %); Porto Alegre do Piauí (72 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
- 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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. 164 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.