How long did the Patagones fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 February 2017 and 19 February 2017: 2 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 6,108 hectares (61.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Patagones (3,293 ha, 0.2 %); Pichi Mahuída (2,797 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AR · Argentina · 2017-02-18 → 2017-02-19

Patagones fire, February 2017 Patagones, Pichi Mahuída

Out · last detection 19 Feb 2017, 17:01 UTC

The fire started on 18 February 2017 in Patagones, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,108 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 32th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 35 in Argentina in 2017, of 256.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Patagones · 2016 Patagones · 2016 Pichi Mahuída · 2019 Pichi Mahuída · 2016

Burnt area: 6,108ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 2days; 18 Feb 2017 – 19 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; departments
Started on: 18 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 176; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.4GW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 19 Feb 2017

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Feb19 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

18 Feb 19 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high

71km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.2 mm on 24 Feb.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 93 ha in 2016.

93 ha Patagones fire, December 2016 2,506 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (61 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

Patagones 30,806 inhabitants where it started

3,293 ha reached on 18 Feb

0.2 %
Pichi Mahuída

2,797 ha reached on 18 Feb

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)
18 Feb	27.5 °C	16 %	71 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Feb	34.2 °C	22 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Feb after	34.8 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
21 Feb after	34.0 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
22 Feb after	34.7 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Feb after	32.4 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Feb after	30.4 °C	54 %	45 km/h	13.2 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Feb 2017

After · 26 Feb 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 · 176Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Patagones fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 February 2017 and 19 February 2017: 2 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 6,108 hectares (61.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Patagones (3,293 ha, 0.2 %); Pichi Mahuída (2,797 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 911 · 100.

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. 176 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