Paracatu fire, October 2024 Paracatu, Cristalina
The fire started on 4 October 2024 in Paracatu, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,096 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 49th largest in Minas Gerais since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 538 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Paracatu · 2022
- Burnt area
- 6,096ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 4 Oct 2024 – 8 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 177
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 351MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.8 mm on 10 Oct.
This area had burned before
9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 550 ha in 2019.
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
-
5,238 ha0.6 %
-
Cristalina 62,337 inhabitants889 ha0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Oct | 36.0 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 5 Oct | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 6 Oct | 35.2 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Oct | 36.1 °C | 21 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 8 Oct | 32.3 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 4.4 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 9 Oct after | 35.0 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Oct after | 26.8 °C | 58 % | 30 km/h | 5.8 mm | Very low 4 |
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 8 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily 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 · 0Every 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 Paracatu fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 October 2024 and 8 October 2024: 5 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 6,096 hectares (61.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Paracatu (5,238 ha, 0.6 %); Cristalina (889 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
- 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. No 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.