Pilcomayo fire, 10 March 2024 Pilcomayo, Pilagás
The fire started on 10 March 2024 in Pilcomayo, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,214 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 9th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 5 in Argentina in 2024, of 142.
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- Burnt area
- 16,214ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 10 Mar 2024 – 26 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- departments
- Started on
- 10 Mar
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 607
- in a single hotspot: 278 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 629MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 2 Apr.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 453 ha in 2016, 12,724 ha in 2020, 1,379 ha in 2021, 7,235 ha in 2022, 175 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,784 ha that had burned before.
- 5,942 ha Pilcomayo fire, January 2022 81,287 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,138 ha Pilcomayo fire, April 2020 3,684 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,862 ha Pilcomayo fire, August 2020 2,941 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 300 ha Pilcomayo fire, December 2021 3,006 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 152 ha Pilcomayo fire, March 2020 1,615 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 69 ha Pilcomayo fire, July 2020 1,537 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 30 ha Pirané fire, September 2020 13,234 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Pilcomayo fire, October 2020 2,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started11,230 ha reached on 11 Mar2.1 %
-
5,070 ha reached on 13 Mar1.5 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.69 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Mar | 37.1 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 24 |
| 11 Mar | 39.3 °C | 37 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Mar | 39.9 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Mar | 39.9 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 14 Mar | 40.8 °C | 33 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Mar | 39.2 °C | 40 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 16 Mar | 41.4 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 17 Mar | 34.0 °C | 51 % | 44 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Mar | 39.0 °C | 38 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Mar | 40.4 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Mar | 40.6 °C | 31 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Mar | 33.0 °C | 49 % | 44 km/h | 10.1 mm | Low 8 |
| 22 Mar | 26.5 °C | 56 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 23 Mar | 30.7 °C | 59 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 24 Mar | 32.9 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 25 Mar | 33.7 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 26 Mar | 33.6 °C | 40 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Mar after | 35.3 °C | 41 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 28 Mar after | 35.9 °C | 42 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 29 Mar after | 36.2 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Mar after | 37.2 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Mar after | 36.8 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 1 Apr after | 34.8 °C | 47 % | 27 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Apr after | 34.3 °C | 54 % | 25 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 14 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 18 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 607Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pilcomayo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 March 2024 to 26 March 2024 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 March 2024 to 20 March 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,214 hectares (162.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pilcomayo (11,230 ha, 2.1 %); Pilagás (5,070 ha, 1.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 ›
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.
- Last day with fire: 20 March 2024 → 26 March 2024.
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
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 10 March 2024 to 20 March 2024. 607 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.
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.