Skip to content
worldfires
BR · Brazil · →

Paranatinga fire, 13 August 2026 Paranatinga

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2026, 17:32 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2026 in Paranatinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,752 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1539th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 546 in Brazil in 2026, of 749.

Burnt area
3,752ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
13 Aug 2026 – 18 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Aug
2026
Heat detections
90
in a single hotspot: 178 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
993MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug18 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

141517

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
42km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 1 Sept.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 27 ha in 2016, 3,846 ha in 2017, 156 ha in 2018, 3,750 ha in 2019, 4,186 ha in 2021, 2,923 ha in 2022, 470 ha in 2023, 409 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,771 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Paranatinga 26,423 inhabitants where it started
    3,773 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.2 %

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)
13 Aug 35.3 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Aug 35.8 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Aug 35.8 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Aug 37.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Aug 36.4 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Aug 36.0 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug after 36.5 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Aug after 36.2 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Aug after 36.5 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug after 37.2 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Aug after 37.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Aug after 37.2 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Aug after 38.1 °C 21 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug after 37.4 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug after 37.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Aug after 36.3 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug after 37.3 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Aug after 38.2 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
31 Aug after 38.7 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept after 38.2 °C 26 % 27 km/h 1.1 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Aug 2026
After · 25 Aug 2026

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 22 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 168 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak168 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10170 µg/m³
Optical depth0.94
11121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 90Every 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 13 August 2026 and 18 August 2026: 6 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 3,752 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Paranatinga (3,773 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

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.

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.