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Patiño fire, 14 September 2019 Patiño

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2019, 17:11 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Patiño, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,327 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 621 with a page). Number 2 in Argentina in 2019, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Patiño · 2019Patiño · 2019Patiño · 2021Patiño · 2016

Burnt area
15,327ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
14 Sept 2019 – 11 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
2,117
in a single hotspot: 963 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
3.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept11 Oct
12 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 573 MW · 24 15 Sept 2019 · 7,986 MW · 147 16 Sept 2019 · 6,456 MW · 421 18 Sept 2019 · 381 MW · 12 19 Sept 2019 · 585 MW · 48 20 Sept 2019 · 2,606 MW · 176 21 Sept 2019 · 2,560 MW · 88 22 Sept 2019 · 2,206 MW · 102 23 Sept 2019 · 1,027 MW · 57 24 Sept 2019 · 1,155 MW · 48 25 Sept 2019 · 14 MW · 2 26 Sept 2019 · 439 MW · 28 27 Sept 2019 · 3,497 MW · 73 28 Sept 2019 · 2,391 MW · 51 29 Sept 2019 · 1,964 MW · 69 30 Sept 2019 · 14,475 MW · 230 1 Oct 2019 · 14,731 MW · 312 4 Oct 2019 · 6 MW · 3 7 Oct 2019 · 1 MW · 1 8 Oct 2019 · 34 MW · 4 9 Oct 2019 · 186 MW · 9 10 Oct 2019 · 1,542 MW · 34 11 Oct 2019 · 4,245 MW · 74 12 Oct 2019 · 4,223 MW · 104
14 Sept 19 Sept 23 Sept 27 Sept 1 Oct 9 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

40°high
73km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.5 mm on 14 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 90 ha in 2016, 89 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.7% of the area of London (153 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. Patiño where it started
    15,384 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.6 %

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 area0.29 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 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)
14 Sept 29.8 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
15 Sept 37.9 °C 26 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Sept 33.1 °C 41 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Sept 20.8 °C 58 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
18 Sept 25.6 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
19 Sept 29.9 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Sept 24.8 °C 32 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
21 Sept 26.8 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Sept 29.1 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept 30.8 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Sept 32.6 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
25 Sept 30.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Sept 31.7 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Sept 33.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Sept 36.3 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Sept 38.1 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept 39.9 °C 26 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct 39.2 °C 25 % 66 km/h 5.3 mm High 32
2 Oct 21.1 °C 78 % 44 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 0
3 Oct 20.2 °C 74 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
4 Oct 23.0 °C 63 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
5 Oct 18.1 °C 79 % 39 km/h 31.6 mm Very low 0
6 Oct 21.3 °C 68 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
7 Oct 27.4 °C 52 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
8 Oct 30.7 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
9 Oct 33.0 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
10 Oct 36.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
11 Oct 38.7 °C 28 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Oct after 38.0 °C 31 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct after 37.9 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.9 mm High 22
14 Oct after 25.0 °C 81 % 49 km/h 19.5 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2019
After · 18 Oct 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 · 2,117Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Patiño fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2019 to 11 October 2019 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2019 to 4 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,327 hectares (153.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Patiño (15,384 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 October 2019 → 11 October 2019.

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
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 911 · 100.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 September 2019 to 4 October 2019. 2,117 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.