Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Pavussu fire, 27 September 2022 Rio Grande do Piauí, Pavussu

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2022, 03:43 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Pavussu, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,680 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 109th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 103 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rio Grande do Piauí · 2018Canavieira · 2023Rio Grande do Piauí · 2023Flores do Piauí · 2021

Burnt area
10,680ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
27 Sept 2022 – 23 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
27 Sept
2022
Heat detections
616
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept23 Oct
23 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 28 Sept 2022 · 3 MW · 2 29 Sept 2022 · 26 MW · 5 30 Sept 2022 · 106 MW · 16 1 Oct 2022 · 557 MW · 44 2 Oct 2022 · 231 MW · 38 3 Oct 2022 · 174 MW · 24 4 Oct 2022 · 116 MW · 16 5 Oct 2022 · 147 MW · 37 6 Oct 2022 · 168 MW · 25 7 Oct 2022 · 349 MW · 31 8 Oct 2022 · 105 MW · 16 9 Oct 2022 · 85 MW · 11 10 Oct 2022 · 83 MW · 24 11 Oct 2022 · 158 MW · 26 12 Oct 2022 · 248 MW · 48 13 Oct 2022 · 152 MW · 24 14 Oct 2022 · 48 MW · 13 15 Oct 2022 · 279 MW · 32 16 Oct 2022 · 223 MW · 38 17 Oct 2022 · 259 MW · 38 18 Oct 2022 · 189 MW · 23 19 Oct 2022 · 151 MW · 22 20 Oct 2022 · 29 MW · 12 21 Oct 2022 · 126 MW · 32 22 Oct 2022 · 50 MW · 17 23 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 1
27 Sept 1 Oct 5 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 21 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
54km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,445 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,874 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (107 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. Rio Grande do Piauí 5,801 inhabitants
    5,679 ha reached on 30 Sept
    8.9 %
  2. Pavussu 3,628 inhabitants where it started
    5,068 ha reached on 27 Sept
    4.6 %

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 area0.41 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 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)
27 Sept 35.5 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept 36.6 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Sept 36.6 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Sept 37.0 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct 36.7 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Oct 36.7 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Oct 37.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Oct 36.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Oct 37.7 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Oct 37.2 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Oct 37.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct 36.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Oct 37.5 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Oct 36.7 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
11 Oct 36.6 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
12 Oct 36.2 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
13 Oct 35.8 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Oct 36.4 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Oct 37.3 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Oct 36.2 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Oct 36.4 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Oct 36.7 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Oct 36.0 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 37.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Oct 37.2 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Oct 35.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Oct 33.6 °C 42 % 31 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 21
24 Oct after 34.7 °C 40 % 28 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2022
After · 30 Oct 2022

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 5 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 90 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak90 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10128 µg/m³
Optical depth0.82
26272829301234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 616Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pavussu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2022 to 23 October 2022 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2022 to 23 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,680 hectares (106.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rio Grande do Piauí (5,679 ha, 8.9 %); Pavussu (5,068 ha, 4.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
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 ›

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. Start date: 28 September 2022 → 27 September 2022.

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 193.

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 28 September 2022 to 23 October 2022. 616 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.