How long did the Pilcomayo fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2020 and 26 August 2020: 12 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 2,941 hectares (29.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pilcomayo (2,957 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.

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 · 2020-08-15 → 2020-08-26

Pilcomayo fire, 15 August 2020 Pilcomayo

Out · last detection 26 Aug 2020, 17:30 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2020 in Pilcomayo, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,941 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 175th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 216 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 2,941ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 15 Aug 2020 – 26 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 15 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 182; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 5; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 177MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug26 Aug

Play back 26 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 25 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

36°high

64km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 187 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (29 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

Pilcomayo where it started

2,957 ha reached on 15 Aug

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.

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)
15 Aug	21.9 °C	51 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
16 Aug	23.3 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
17 Aug	26.1 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
18 Aug	29.1 °C	41 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
19 Aug	25.1 °C	34 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Aug	16.1 °C	25 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Aug	16.4 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Aug	21.2 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
23 Aug	26.5 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Aug	32.4 °C	29 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Aug	34.9 °C	28 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Aug	36.0 °C	24 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
27 Aug after	37.8 °C	21 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 Aug after	35.7 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Aug after	39.9 °C	13 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
30 Aug after	28.3 °C	52 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
31 Aug after	21.0 °C	52 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 Sept after	21.5 °C	48 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 Sept after	20.8 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Sept after	20.6 °C	42 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 21
4 Sept after	26.7 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Sept after	36.2 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2020

After · 2 Sept 2020

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 · 182Every 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 Pilcomayo fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2020 and 26 August 2020: 12 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 2,941 hectares (29.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pilcomayo (2,957 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 182 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.

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