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Patiño fire, 21 July 2021 Patiño

Out · last detection 9 Aug 2021, 04:38 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2021 in Patiño, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,812 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 621 with a page). Number 5 in Argentina in 2021, of 217.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Patiño · 2020Patiño · 2020Patiño · 2026Bermejo · 2023

Burnt area
15,812ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
21 Jul 2021 – 9 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
21 Jul
2021
Heat detections
1,368
in a single hotspot: 933 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
3.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul9 Aug
9 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jul 2021 · 11 MW · 2 22 Jul 2021 · 221 MW · 6 23 Jul 2021 · 3,097 MW · 47 24 Jul 2021 · 61,742 MW · 745 25 Jul 2021 · 1,478 MW · 361 26 Jul 2021 · 908 MW · 25 27 Jul 2021 · 400 MW · 23 28 Jul 2021 · 224 MW · 25 29 Jul 2021 · 124 MW · 11 30 Jul 2021 · 220 MW · 18 31 Jul 2021 · 105 MW · 10 1 Aug 2021 · 490 MW · 16 2 Aug 2021 · 156 MW · 20 3 Aug 2021 · 2 MW · 1 5 Aug 2021 · 10 MW · 3 6 Aug 2021 · 77 MW · 2 7 Aug 2021 · 1,074 MW · 26 8 Aug 2021 · 649 MW · 24 9 Aug 2021 · 7 MW · 3
21 Jul 24 Jul 27 Jul 30 Jul 2 Aug 6 Aug 9 Aug

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
57km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,082 ha in 2016, 23 ha in 2018, 349 ha in 2019, 4,396 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (158 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
    15,832 ha reached on 21 Jul
    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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
21 Jul 24.0 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Jul 29.8 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jul 33.7 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jul 34.3 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jul 31.3 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul 22.9 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Jul 18.2 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
28 Jul 17.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jul 17.3 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Jul 18.5 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Jul 22.5 °C 28 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Aug 24.0 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Aug 25.0 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Aug 24.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Aug 21.5 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
5 Aug 25.0 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
6 Aug 29.4 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Aug 34.1 °C 24 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Aug 34.5 °C 27 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Aug 24.9 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug after 15.7 °C 54 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Aug after 17.8 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Aug after 18.8 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Aug after 21.1 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Aug after 23.3 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Aug after 25.7 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Aug after 31.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Aug after 35.7 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Aug after 37.5 °C 23 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
19 Aug after 37.5 °C 21 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2021
After · 16 Aug 2021

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 · 1,368Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2021 and 9 August 2021: 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 15,812 hectares (158.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Patiño (15,832 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 57 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 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,368 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.