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Pimenteiras fire, 30 September 2020 Pimenteiras, São Miguel do Tapuio

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2020, 16:32 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2020 in Pimenteiras, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,336 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 451th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 591 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pimenteiras · 2025Aroazes · 2026Lagoa do Sítio · 2021Lagoa do Sítio · 2021

Burnt area
4,336ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
30 Sept 2020 – 16 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
30 Sept
2020
Heat detections
170
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
172MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept16 Oct
11 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2020 · 39 MW · 6 1 Oct 2020 · 35 MW · 2 2 Oct 2020 · 85 MW · 11 3 Oct 2020 · 105 MW · 13 4 Oct 2020 · 118 MW · 13 5 Oct 2020 · 717 MW · 33 6 Oct 2020 · 620 MW · 46 7 Oct 2020 · 159 MW · 19 8 Oct 2020 · 90 MW · 21 9 Oct 2020 · 48 MW · 3 10 Oct 2020 · 9 MW · 1 11 Oct 2020 · 40 MW · 2
30 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
46km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 2.7% of the area of London (43 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
    4,142 ha reached on 30 Sept
    0.9 %
  2. São Miguel do Tapuio 17,554 inhabitants
    221 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.0 %

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)
30 Sept 37.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Oct 37.0 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Oct 37.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Oct 38.1 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Oct 38.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Oct 38.6 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Oct 37.7 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 Oct 37.3 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Oct 38.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Oct 37.3 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct 36.9 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Oct 36.8 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Oct 36.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Oct 38.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Oct 36.8 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Oct 37.7 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Oct 38.1 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Oct after 38.2 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Oct after 38.0 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Oct after 37.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Oct after 37.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Oct after 38.2 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Oct after 38.3 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Oct after 36.0 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Oct after 36.1 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
25 Oct after 36.8 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Oct after 35.9 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2020
After · 23 Oct 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 · 170Every 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 30 September 2020 to 16 October 2020 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2020 to 9 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,336 hectares (43.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pimenteiras (4,142 ha, 0.9 %); São Miguel do Tapuio (221 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
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. Last day with fire: 9 October 2020 → 16 October 2020.

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 30 September 2020 to 9 October 2020. 170 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.