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Paranatinga fire, 22 August 2017 Paranatinga, Gaúcha do Norte

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2017, 17:08 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2017 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,308 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 268th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 99 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gaúcha do Norte · 2016Paranatinga · 2026Paranatinga · 2021Paranatinga · 2024

Burnt area
15,308ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
22 Aug 2017 – 30 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
22 Aug
2017
Heat detections
453
in a single hotspot: 277 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
922MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug30 Aug
30 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2017 · 703 MW · 32 23 Aug 2017 · 547 MW · 20 24 Aug 2017 · 3,123 MW · 87 25 Aug 2017 · 2,639 MW · 138 26 Aug 2017 · 340 MW · 39 27 Aug 2017 · 486 MW · 48 28 Aug 2017 · 440 MW · 54 29 Aug 2017 · 10 MW · 9 30 Aug 2017 · 11 MW · 3
22 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug

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
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 637 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.7% of the area of London (153 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. Paranatinga 26,423 inhabitants where it started
    14,735 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.6 %
  2. Gaúcha do Norte 8,642 inhabitants
    699 ha reached on 28 Aug
    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.

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)
19 Aug 36.2 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Aug 36.0 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Aug 32.2 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
22 Aug 35.4 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Aug 34.9 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Aug 35.1 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Aug 35.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Aug 35.8 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug 37.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug 37.3 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Aug 37.4 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Aug 38.0 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Aug after 36.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Sept after 38.3 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Sept after 36.6 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Sept after 35.2 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Sept after 34.0 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Sept after 34.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept after 35.2 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept after 36.0 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Sept after 36.7 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept after 37.9 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Sept after 37.1 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Sept after 37.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept after 37.6 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Sept after 36.0 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Sept after 36.6 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Sept after 36.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept after 34.6 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2017
After · 6 Sept 2017

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 · 453Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Paranatinga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 August 2017 and 30 August 2017: 9 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 15,308 hectares (153.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Paranatinga (14,735 ha, 0.6 %); Gaúcha do Norte (699 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 193.

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. 453 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.