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Paranatinga fire, 3 September 2019 Paranatinga, Nova Ubiratã

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2019, 16:49 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2019 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,889 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 179th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 46 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Paranatinga · 2017Paranatinga · 2024Paranatinga · 2020Paranatinga · 2023

Burnt area
20,889ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
3 Sept 2019 – 22 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2019
Heat detections
705
in a single hotspot: 238 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
848MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept22 Sept
22 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2019 · 73 MW · 2 4 Sept 2019 · 337 MW · 8 5 Sept 2019 · 202 MW · 22 6 Sept 2019 · 1,339 MW · 16 7 Sept 2019 · 4,764 MW · 118 8 Sept 2019 · 2,079 MW · 107 9 Sept 2019 · 1,643 MW · 127 10 Sept 2019 · 842 MW · 77 11 Sept 2019 · 89 MW · 6 12 Sept 2019 · 22 MW · 3 13 Sept 2019 · 14 MW · 5 14 Sept 2019 · 43 MW · 6 15 Sept 2019 · 264 MW · 18 16 Sept 2019 · 746 MW · 21 17 Sept 2019 · 526 MW · 25 18 Sept 2019 · 1,872 MW · 54 19 Sept 2019 · 1,546 MW · 54 20 Sept 2019 · 3 MW · 2 21 Sept 2019 · 431 MW · 24 22 Sept 2019 · 124 MW · 10
3 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 21 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
17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,483 ha in 2016, 10,640 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,048 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (209 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
    18,357 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.8 %
  2. Nova Ubiratã 11,530 inhabitants
    2,675 ha reached on 7 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area0.22 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 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)
3 Sept 38.0 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Sept 38.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Sept 39.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept 38.8 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Sept 36.8 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Sept 36.9 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Sept 37.1 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept 37.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 37.9 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 39.2 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 36.8 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 38.7 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Sept 39.1 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Sept 38.8 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Sept 39.8 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept 37.5 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Sept 36.7 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept 38.1 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 35
21 Sept 37.6 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Sept 37.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm High 31
23 Sept after 37.6 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept after 36.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Sept after 36.5 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept after 30.0 °C 53 % 22 km/h 3.2 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2019
After · 29 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 · 705Every 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 22 September 2019: 20 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 20,889 hectares (208.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Paranatinga (18,357 ha, 0.8 %); Nova Ubiratã (2,675 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 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
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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 705 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.