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Pimenteiras fire, 17 August 2019 Pimenteiras, Lagoa do Sítio

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2019, 16:13 UTC

The fire started on 17 August 2019 in Pimenteiras, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,687 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 18 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pimenteiras · 2021Pimenteiras · 2019Pio IX · 2019Pimenteiras · 2021

Burnt area
36,687ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
17 Aug 2019 – 8 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
17 Aug
2019
Heat detections
1,568
in a single hotspot: 231 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
886MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Aug8 Sept
8 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

17 Aug 2019 · 3 MW · 1 18 Aug 2019 · 405 MW · 8 19 Aug 2019 · 467 MW · 16 20 Aug 2019 · 166 MW · 19 21 Aug 2019 · 16 MW · 3 23 Aug 2019 · 573 MW · 14 24 Aug 2019 · 4,671 MW · 230 25 Aug 2019 · 4,834 MW · 401 26 Aug 2019 · 2,254 MW · 282 27 Aug 2019 · 1,733 MW · 260 28 Aug 2019 · 2,463 MW · 139 29 Aug 2019 · 1,040 MW · 80 30 Aug 2019 · 539 MW · 36 31 Aug 2019 · 28 MW · 17 1 Sept 2019 · 56 MW · 17 2 Sept 2019 · 74 MW · 17 3 Sept 2019 · 25 MW · 3 4 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 3 5 Sept 2019 · 66 MW · 7 6 Sept 2019 · 40 MW · 10 7 Sept 2019 · 24 MW · 4 8 Sept 2019 · 7 MW · 1
17 Aug 21 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug 30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept

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
52km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,111 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (367 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. Pimenteiras 11,341 inhabitants where it started
    36,866 ha reached on 17 Aug
    8.0 %
  2. Lagoa do Sítio 4,520 inhabitants
    70 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.1 %

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 area0.95 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.95 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (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)
17 Aug 30.5 °C 43 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Aug 34.1 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Aug 34.7 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug 35.6 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Aug 35.9 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug 36.1 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Aug 34.1 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Aug 34.6 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Aug 34.6 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Aug 34.4 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Aug 34.5 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Aug 34.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 34.4 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug 34.7 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Aug 33.9 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Sept 35.0 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Sept 35.4 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Sept 34.4 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 35.1 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Sept 35.7 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Sept 35.1 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Sept 34.2 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 34.8 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept after 34.8 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept after 35.3 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Sept after 35.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept after 36.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Sept after 36.9 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Sept after 36.4 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept after 36.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept after 35.3 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept after 35.9 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept after 34.4 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Aug 2019
After · 15 Sept 2019

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 · 1,568Every 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 Pimenteiras fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 August 2019 to 8 September 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 August 2019 to 8 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 36,687 hectares (366.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pimenteiras (36,866 ha, 8.0 %); Lagoa do Sítio (70 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 52 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 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 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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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 23 August 2019 to 8 September 2019. 1,568 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.