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Pimenteiras fire, 18 September 2021 Pimenteiras

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2021, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 18 September 2021 in Pimenteiras, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,745 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 106th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 150 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pimenteiras · 2021Pimenteiras · 2020Pimenteiras · 2025Pimenteiras · 2019

Burnt area
10,745ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
18 Sept 2021 – 19 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Sept
2021
Heat detections
630
in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
230MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Sept19 Oct
19 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

18 Sept 2021 · 7 MW · 1 20 Sept 2021 · 112 MW · 12 21 Sept 2021 · 870 MW · 22 22 Sept 2021 · 130 MW · 23 23 Sept 2021 · 244 MW · 36 24 Sept 2021 · 17 MW · 10 25 Sept 2021 · 55 MW · 6 26 Sept 2021 · 39 MW · 6 27 Sept 2021 · 121 MW · 24 28 Sept 2021 · 288 MW · 16 29 Sept 2021 · 182 MW · 20 30 Sept 2021 · 123 MW · 14 1 Oct 2021 · 50 MW · 7 2 Oct 2021 · 78 MW · 7 3 Oct 2021 · 452 MW · 38 4 Oct 2021 · 1,098 MW · 63 5 Oct 2021 · 399 MW · 35 6 Oct 2021 · 277 MW · 27 7 Oct 2021 · 700 MW · 35 8 Oct 2021 · 656 MW · 76 9 Oct 2021 · 142 MW · 35 10 Oct 2021 · 72 MW · 17 11 Oct 2021 · 128 MW · 15 12 Oct 2021 · 24 MW · 4 13 Oct 2021 · 246 MW · 31 14 Oct 2021 · 92 MW · 25 15 Oct 2021 · 79 MW · 7 16 Oct 2021 · 172 MW · 10 17 Oct 2021 · 38 MW · 7 19 Oct 2021 · 8 MW · 1
18 Sept 24 Sept 29 Sept 4 Oct 9 Oct 14 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

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.8 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 215 ha in 2016, 32 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (107 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
    10,815 ha reached on 18 Sept
    2.4 %

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 area0.61 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.61 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
18 Sept 33.9 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept 35.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept 35.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Sept 35.3 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Sept 35.5 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 35.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Sept 34.7 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 48
25 Sept 33.9 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Sept 34.4 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Sept 35.6 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Sept 35.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Sept 35.0 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
30 Sept 33.3 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Oct 33.2 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Oct 34.7 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Oct 35.2 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct 35.6 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Oct 34.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 36.1 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Oct 35.5 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 35.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct 34.5 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Oct 34.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Oct 34.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Oct 34.6 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 41
13 Oct 35.8 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Oct 35.5 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct 35.5 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Oct 35.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Oct 36.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Oct 35.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Oct 33.2 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Oct after 32.3 °C 42 % 23 km/h 5.8 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Sept 2021
After · 26 Oct 2021

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 · 630Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 September 2021 and 19 October 2021: 32 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 10,745 hectares (107.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pimenteiras (10,815 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

Report an error
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 630 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.