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Orán fire, 31 August 2022 Orán

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2022, 18:34 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2022 in Orán, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,996 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Salta since 2016 (of 231 with a page). Number 37 in Argentina in 2022, of 441.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orán · 2022Orán · 2025Orán · 2022Orán · 2025

Burnt area
7,996ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
31 Aug 2022 – 19 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
31 Aug
2022
Heat detections
711
in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
145MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug19 Sept
19 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2022 · 5 MW · 3 1 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 4 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 5 Sept 2022 · 36 MW · 9 6 Sept 2022 · 91 MW · 17 7 Sept 2022 · 81 MW · 18 8 Sept 2022 · 176 MW · 20 9 Sept 2022 · 74 MW · 24 10 Sept 2022 · 174 MW · 63 11 Sept 2022 · 203 MW · 48 12 Sept 2022 · 42 MW · 7 13 Sept 2022 · 144 MW · 30 14 Sept 2022 · 135 MW · 17 15 Sept 2022 · 462 MW · 130 16 Sept 2022 · 435 MW · 150 17 Sept 2022 · 349 MW · 102 18 Sept 2022 · 93 MW · 30 19 Sept 2022 · 98 MW · 41
31 Aug 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 15 Sept 17 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

38°high
38km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 98 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (80 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. Orán where it started
    8,025 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.7 %

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)
31 Aug 28.9 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Sept 33.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Sept 22.8 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Sept 21.2 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Sept 24.7 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Sept 27.5 °C 15 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Sept 29.9 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept 31.3 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 37.9 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Sept 24.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept 23.5 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Sept 25.2 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept 27.9 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Sept 27.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept 25.7 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept 28.0 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 30.7 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Sept 32.0 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Sept 37.2 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept 29.4 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
20 Sept after 22.7 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
21 Sept after 22.5 °C 49 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
22 Sept after 22.8 °C 32 % 31 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2022
After · 26 Sept 2022

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 9 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 87 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak87 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10124 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
2345678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 711Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Orán fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2022 to 19 September 2022 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 September 2022 to 19 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,996 hectares (80.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Orán (8,025 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 4 September 2022 → 31 August 2022.

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.

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 911 · 100.

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 4 September 2022 to 19 September 2022. 711 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.

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.