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Pimenteiras fire, December 2019 Pimenteiras

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2019, 03:54 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2019 in Pimenteiras, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,446 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 89th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 134 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pimenteiras · 2019Pio IX · 2019Pimenteiras · 2020Pimenteiras · 2021

Burnt area
11,446ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
15 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
426
in a single hotspot: 263 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
969MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec28 Dec
28 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Dec 2019 · 19 MW · 2 19 Dec 2019 · 43 MW · 15 20 Dec 2019 · 1,020 MW · 23 21 Dec 2019 · 4,634 MW · 89 22 Dec 2019 · 1,453 MW · 130 23 Dec 2019 · 864 MW · 67 24 Dec 2019 · 487 MW · 34 25 Dec 2019 · 750 MW · 24 26 Dec 2019 · 1,287 MW · 20 27 Dec 2019 · 87 MW · 13 28 Dec 2019 · 14 MW · 9
18 Dec 20 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 24 Dec 26 Dec 28 Dec

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
49km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 30 Dec.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.2% of the area of London (114 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
    11,525 ha reached on 18 Dec
    2.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.14 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of 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)
15 Dec 34.3 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Dec 32.0 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Dec 32.4 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
18 Dec 33.4 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
19 Dec 33.0 °C 32 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Dec 34.8 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Dec 35.7 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Dec 36.0 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Dec 35.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Dec 35.7 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Dec 36.2 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Dec 36.2 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Dec 36.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Dec 34.0 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Dec after 33.6 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Dec after 28.3 °C 46 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2019
After · 4 Jan 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 · 426Every 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 15 December 2019 to 28 December 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 December 2019 to 28 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,446 hectares (114.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pimenteiras (11,525 ha, 2.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 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 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 18 December 2019 → 15 December 2019.

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 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 18 December 2019 to 28 December 2019. 426 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.