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Orán fire, 31 August 2022 Orán, Ledesma

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2022, 18:53 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2022 in Orán, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,206 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 52th largest in Salta since 2016 (of 231 with a page). Number 143 in Argentina in 2022, of 442.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orán · 2020Ledesma · 2022Ledesma · 2022Ledesma · 2020

Burnt area
3,206ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
31 Aug 2022 – 18 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
departments
Started on
31 Aug
2022
Heat detections
158
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
91MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2022 · 6 MW · 2 1 Sept 2022 · 25 MW · 3 4 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 1 5 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 7 6 Sept 2022 · 214 MW · 16 7 Sept 2022 · 688 MW · 39 8 Sept 2022 · 265 MW · 43 9 Sept 2022 · 42 MW · 11 10 Sept 2022 · 40 MW · 14 11 Sept 2022 · 32 MW · 2 12 Sept 2022 · 25 MW · 3 13 Sept 2022 · 64 MW · 10 14 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 1 15 Sept 2022 · 9 MW · 3 16 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 2 18 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 1
31 Aug 5 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 18 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

39°high
43km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,205 ha in 2016, 1,679 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,960 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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
    3,224 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.3 %
  2. Ledesma
    2 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 area0.23 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.23 hectares of 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)
4 Sept 25.8 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 28.6 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Sept 30.8 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Sept 32.3 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 39.2 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 25.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 24.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept 26.0 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Sept 28.9 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Sept 28.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Sept 26.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 28.9 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 31.3 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 33.2 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept 38.9 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Sept after 30.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept after 23.9 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Sept after 24.1 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
22 Sept after 24.3 °C 26 % 26 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2022
After · 25 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 8 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 105 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak105 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10150 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
2345678910111213141516171819
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 · 158Every 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 18 September 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 September 2022 to 16 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,206 hectares (32.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Orán (3,224 ha, 0.3 %); Ledesma (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 43 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 September 2022 → 18 September 2022.
  2. 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 16 September 2022. 158 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.