Skip to content
worldfires
en
AR · Argentina · →

Pilcomayo fire, 2 March 2020 Pilcomayo

Out · last detection 13 Mar 2020, 17:42 UTC

The fire started on 2 March 2020 in Pilcomayo, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,117 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 329th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 371 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Formosa · 2024Pilcomayo · 2022Pilcomayo · 2024Pirané · 2020

Burnt area
2,117ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
2 Mar 2020 – 14 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
2 Mar
2020
Heat detections
103
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
139MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Mar14 Mar
13 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

2 Mar 2020 · 79 MW · 6 3 Mar 2020 · 102 MW · 10 4 Mar 2020 · 123 MW · 13 5 Mar 2020 · 372 MW · 35 6 Mar 2020 · 284 MW · 20 8 Mar 2020 · 32 MW · 3 11 Mar 2020 · 174 MW · 13 12 Mar 2020 · 7 MW · 1 13 Mar 2020 · 74 MW · 2
2 Mar 4 Mar 5 Mar 6 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
27km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 64 ha in 2016, 577 ha in 2017, 266 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Pilcomayo where it started
    2,128 ha reached on 2 Mar
    0.4 %

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)
2 Mar 34.8 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
3 Mar 34.5 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Mar 35.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
5 Mar 34.4 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Mar 34.8 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Mar 36.4 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
8 Mar 37.8 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Mar 38.2 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Mar 38.2 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Mar 37.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Mar 39.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Mar 39.7 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Mar 39.7 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Mar after 33.2 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Mar after 34.0 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
17 Mar after 36.8 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Feb 2020
After · 21 Mar 2020

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 · 103Every 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 Pilcomayo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 March 2020 to 14 March 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 March 2020 to 7 March 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,117 hectares (21.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pilcomayo (2,128 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 March 2020 to 7 March 2020. 103 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.