How long did the Nova Nazaré fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2019 to 17 September 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2019 to 14 September 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,153 hectares (141.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nova Nazaré (14,231 ha, 3.5 %); Cocalinho (15 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.6 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2019-08-26 → 2019-09-17

Nova Nazaré fire, 26 August 2019 Nova Nazaré, Cocalinho

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2019, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2019 in Nova Nazaré, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,153 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 295th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 99 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nova Nazaré · 2017 Nova Nazaré · 2018 Nova Nazaré · 2016 Nova Nazaré · 2016

Burnt area: 14,153ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 26 Aug 2019 – 17 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 26 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 440; in a single hotspot: 620 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 355MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug17 Sept

Play back 17 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 16 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

43°high

47km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,170 ha in 2016, 7,021 ha in 2017, 3,580 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,676 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.9% of the area of London (142 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

Nova Nazaré where it started

14,231 ha reached on 26 Aug

3.5 %
Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants

15 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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
26 Aug	37.0 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
27 Aug	37.1 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Aug	36.6 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
29 Aug	37.7 °C	16 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Aug	39.1 °C	14 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Aug	39.7 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Sept	39.5 °C	14 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Sept	40.0 °C	17 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Sept	41.5 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Sept	41.4 °C	12 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
5 Sept	41.6 °C	9 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 Sept	39.9 °C	13 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
7 Sept	38.7 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
8 Sept	38.1 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
9 Sept	39.3 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
10 Sept	40.7 °C	12 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
11 Sept	40.8 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
12 Sept	40.8 °C	15 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Sept	41.2 °C	12 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Sept	42.6 °C	6 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
15 Sept	41.3 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
16 Sept	40.3 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 Sept	41.7 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
18 Sept after	41.0 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
19 Sept after	40.9 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
20 Sept after	41.2 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Sept after	41.9 °C	14 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
22 Sept after	41.8 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
23 Sept after	40.1 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
24 Sept after	39.7 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
25 Sept after	39.4 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
26 Sept after	31.1 °C	46 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
27 Sept after	35.9 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Aug 2019

After · 24 Sept 2019

Before After

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 · 440Every 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

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nova Nazaré fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2019 to 17 September 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2019 to 14 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,153 hectares (141.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nova Nazaré (14,231 ha, 3.5 %); Cocalinho (15 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.6 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 14 September 2019 → 17 September 2019.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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 August 2019 to 14 September 2019. 440 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned