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Paranatinga fire, 3 September 2019 Paranatinga

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2019, 05:12 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2019 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,811 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 305th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 102 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Paranatinga · 2017Paranatinga · 2017Paranatinga · 2019Paranatinga · 2023

Burnt area
13,811ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
3 Sept 2019 – 18 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2019
Heat detections
1,026
in a single hotspot: 386 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept18 Sept
19 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2019 · 49 MW · 5 4 Sept 2019 · 1,522 MW · 29 5 Sept 2019 · 2,792 MW · 74 6 Sept 2019 · 6,074 MW · 225 7 Sept 2019 · 1,080 MW · 138 8 Sept 2019 · 126 MW · 26 9 Sept 2019 · 292 MW · 27 10 Sept 2019 · 253 MW · 34 11 Sept 2019 · 542 MW · 17 12 Sept 2019 · 10,305 MW · 134 13 Sept 2019 · 1,223 MW · 135 14 Sept 2019 · 680 MW · 79 15 Sept 2019 · 712 MW · 63 16 Sept 2019 · 201 MW · 21 17 Sept 2019 · 96 MW · 8 18 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 2 19 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1
3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 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

40°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,042 ha in 2016, 12,930 ha in 2017, 1,365 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,465 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (138 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
    13,888 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.6 %

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)
29 Aug 35.6 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Aug 37.1 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Aug 37.3 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept 37.7 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Sept 38.0 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 38.8 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept 39.7 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 40.2 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept 38.8 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Sept 37.4 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Sept 37.3 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept 37.8 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept 37.6 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 38.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 39.7 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Sept 39.3 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Sept 39.8 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 39.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Sept 40.0 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 37.7 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept after 36.9 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept after 38.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept after 38.4 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept after 38.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm High 31
23 Sept after 37.8 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept after 36.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Sept after 36.9 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Sept after 30.3 °C 55 % 23 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
27 Sept after 35.1 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Sept after 34.3 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
29 Sept after 33.9 °C 48 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2019
After · 25 Sept 2019

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 · 1,026Every 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 3 September 2019 and 18 September 2019: 16 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 13,811 hectares (138.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Paranatinga (13,888 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 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
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. 1,026 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.