Nova Iorque fire, August 2025 Pastos Bons, Nova Iorque
The fire started on 28 August 2025 in Nova Iorque, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,547 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 274th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 398 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Porto Alegre do Piauí · 2019
- Burnt area
- 4,547ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 28 Aug 2025 – 9 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 207
- in a single hotspot: 48 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 117MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,119 ha in 2017, 877 ha in 2018, 1,317 ha in 2020, 343 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,002 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
-
Pastos Bons 18,802 inhabitants3,071 ha reached on 3 Sept1.9 %
-
Nova Iorque where it started1,506 ha reached on 28 Aug1.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Aug | 36.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Aug | 35.8 °C | 24 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 27 Aug | 35.8 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Aug | 36.9 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 29 Aug | 36.6 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 30 Aug | 36.2 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 31 Aug | 36.1 °C | 21 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 1 Sept | 36.1 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 2 Sept | 35.6 °C | 24 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 3 Sept | 35.1 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 4 Sept | 35.7 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 5 Sept | 35.4 °C | 25 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Sept | 36.0 °C | 25 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 7 Sept | 36.8 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Sept | 36.3 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Sept | 35.9 °C | 20 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 10 Sept after | 37.9 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 11 Sept after | 38.2 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 12 Sept after | 36.4 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 13 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 14 Sept after | 36.3 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 15 Sept after | 37.1 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 16 Sept after | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 17 Sept after | 37.4 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 Sept after | 37.3 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 19 Sept after | 36.6 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 20 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 21 Sept after | 37.1 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 28 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 207Every 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 Nova Iorque fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2025 and 9 September 2025: 13 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 4,547 hectares (45.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pastos Bons (3,071 ha, 1.9 %); Nova Iorque (1,506 ha, 1.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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
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. 207 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.