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AR · Argentina · –

Patiño fire, 25 September 2026 Patiño

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2026, 18:28 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2026 in Patiño, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,344 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 28 in Argentina in 2026, of 92.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
2,344ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
25 Sept 2026 – 2 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
25 Sept
2026
Heat detections
78
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
429MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept2 Oct
2 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Sept 2026 · 33 MW · 5 26 Sept 2026 · 104 MW · 10 27 Sept 2026 · 485 MW · 12 28 Sept 2026 · 1,519 MW · 50 2 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1
25 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 2 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

42°high
66km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.7 mm on 3 Oct.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 853 ha in 2016, 196 ha in 2018, 2,616 ha in 2020, 1,182 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,317 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (23 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
    2,342 ha reached on 25 Sept
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.13 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
25 Sept 36.0 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
26 Sept 39.2 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Sept 41.0 °C 27 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Sept 42.3 °C 23 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Sept 33.7 °C 37 % 54 km/h 9.7 mm Moderate 17
30 Sept 25.2 °C 67 % 32 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 0
1 Oct 27.5 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
2 Oct 27.9 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Oct after 34.0 °C 40 % 64 km/h 9.7 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Sept 2026
After · 9 Oct 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 1 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 229 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 95: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak229 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10235 µg/m³
Optical depth2.03
23 Sept25 Sept27 Sept29 Sept1 Oct
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 · 78Every 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 25 September 2026 to 2 October 2026 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2026 to 29 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,344 hectares (23.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Patiño (2,342 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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.

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 25 September 2026 to 29 September 2026. 78 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 2025, 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.