How long did the Parnarama fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 September 2017 and 5 October 2017: 7 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 3,747 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Parnarama (3,771 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-09-29 → 2017-10-05

Parnarama fire, 29 September 2017 Parnarama

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2017, 15:55 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2017 in Parnarama, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,747 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 393th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 709 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Matões · 2016 Parnarama · 2017 Matões · 2016 Matões · 2016

Burnt area: 3,747ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 29 Sept 2017 – 5 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 29 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 138; in a single hotspot: 164 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 370MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept5 Oct

Play back 5 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct

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

44km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 90 ha in 2016.

7 ha Matões fire, October 2016 7,251 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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

Parnarama 31,250 inhabitants where it started

3,771 ha reached on 30 Sept

1.2 %

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.

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 Sept	36.6 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Sept	36.6 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Oct	37.3 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Oct	37.5 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Oct	36.9 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Oct	37.0 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Oct	36.2 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Oct after	36.5 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Oct after	35.6 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Oct after	37.0 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Oct after	36.6 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Oct after	35.5 °C	41 %	25 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
11 Oct after	36.2 °C	40 %	41 km/h	0.5 mm	High 35
12 Oct after	36.6 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Oct after	37.1 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Oct after	37.1 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Oct after	37.0 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Sept 2017

After · 12 Oct 2017

Before After

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 · 138Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Parnarama fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 September 2017 and 5 October 2017: 7 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 3,747 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Parnarama (3,771 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.

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What really happened?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 138 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.

Where it burned