How long did the Pichi Mahuída fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 December 2016 to 4 January 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 December 2016 to 4 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 117,377 hectares (1,173.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pichi Mahuída (117,850 ha, 7.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, class Very 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.

AR · Argentina · 2016-12-21 → 2017-01-04

Pichi Mahuída fire, 21 December 2016 Pichi Mahuída

Out · last detection 4 Jan 2017, 05:45 UTC

The fire started on 21 December 2016 in Pichi Mahuída, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 117,377 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 2th largest in Río Negro since 2016 (of 97 with a page). Number 3 in Argentina in 2016, of 257.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pichi Mahuída · 2016 Pichi Mahuída · 2018 Pichi Mahuída · 2020

Burnt area: 117,377ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 21 Dec 2016 – 4 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 21 Dec; 2016
Heat detections: 5,891; in a single hotspot: 749 MW
Danger at start: 75; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 7.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Dec4 Jan

Play back 4 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 24 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 31 Dec 2 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

68km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 9 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 74% of the area of London (1,174 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

Pichi Mahuída where it started

117,850 ha reached on 21 Dec

7.5 %

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 2015

Built-up area3.4 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.4 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (GHSL 2015, 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 Dec	26.4 °C	12 %	68 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
22 Dec	29.5 °C	19 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
23 Dec	28.6 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Dec	33.7 °C	20 %	55 km/h	0.7 mm	Extreme 51
25 Dec	31.2 °C	15 %	49 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 51
26 Dec	27.5 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
27 Dec	32.1 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Dec	36.3 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Dec	36.6 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
30 Dec	38.9 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
31 Dec	31.7 °C	18 %	63 km/h	0.7 mm	Extreme 61
1 Jan	29.1 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Jan	35.2 °C	13 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
3 Jan	28.0 °C	11 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
4 Jan	28.0 °C	15 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
5 Jan after	24.1 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
6 Jan after	36.1 °C	12 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
7 Jan after	31.6 °C	20 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
8 Jan after	31.9 °C	22 %	50 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 56
9 Jan after	26.8 °C	17 %	64 km/h	1.0 mm	Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Dec 2016

After · 11 Jan 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 · 5,891Every 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 Pichi Mahuída fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 December 2016 to 4 January 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 December 2016 to 4 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 117,377 hectares (1,173.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pichi Mahuída (117,850 ha, 7.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, class Very 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 ›

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 December 2016 to 4 January 2017. 5,891 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned