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BR · Brazil · –

Nazaré do Piauí fire, September 2026 Nazaré do Piauí, Floriano

Out · last detection 6 Oct 2026, 17:15 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2026 in Nazaré do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,464 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 645 in Brazil in 2026, of 797.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
3,464ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
26 Sept 2026 – 6 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
26 Sept
2026
Heat detections
63
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
123MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept6 Oct
6 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 2026 · 24 MW · 4 27 Sept 2026 · 420 MW · 15 28 Sept 2026 · 168 MW · 20 29 Sept 2026 · 155 MW · 6 30 Sept 2026 · 38 MW · 7 1 Oct 2026 · 134 MW · 7 2 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 4 Oct 2026 · 3 MW · 1 5 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 6 Oct 2026 · 42 MW · 3
27 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct 5 Oct

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
42km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,566 ha in 2016, 2,546 ha in 2018, 1,731 ha in 2019, 983 ha in 2021, 159 ha in 2023, 2,970 ha in 2024, 168 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,349 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

  1. Nazaré do Piauí 6,665 inhabitants where it started
    3,469 ha reached on 26 Sept
    2.6 %
  2. Floriano 62,036 inhabitants
    17 ha
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.10 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 55 % of the area in Brazil

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Sept 37.0 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Sept 37.7 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Sept 37.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Sept 37.5 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Sept 38.1 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Oct 38.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Oct 36.2 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
3 Oct 34.5 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
4 Oct 37.6 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Oct 37.1 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Oct 37.3 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Oct after 37.8 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Oct after 38.8 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Oct after 38.2 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Oct after 38.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Oct after 37.9 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Oct after 37.8 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Oct after 38.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Oct after 38.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Oct after 38.0 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Oct after 37.8 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2026
After · 13 Oct 2026

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 3 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.49
24 Sept27 Sept30 Sept3 Oct
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 · 63Every 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 Nazaré do Piauí fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 September 2026 to 6 October 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2026 to 5 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,464 hectares (34.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nazaré do Piauí (3,469 ha, 2.6 %); Floriano (17 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 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.

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?

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.

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 26 September 2026 to 5 October 2026. 63 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.

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 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.