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Poconé fire, 6 December 2022 Poconé, Cáceres

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2022, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 6 December 2022 in Poconé, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,298 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 692th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 186 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2020Poconé · 2024Cáceres · 2024Poconé · 2020

Burnt area
7,298ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
6 Dec 2022 – 28 Dec 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Dec
2022
Heat detections
960
in a single hotspot: 194 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
464MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Dec28 Dec
28 Dec 2022

How it evolved, day by day

6 Dec 2022 · 31 MW · 4 7 Dec 2022 · 80 MW · 7 8 Dec 2022 · 275 MW · 30 9 Dec 2022 · 406 MW · 56 11 Dec 2022 · 106 MW · 44 12 Dec 2022 · 86 MW · 15 13 Dec 2022 · 1,017 MW · 97 14 Dec 2022 · 123 MW · 8 15 Dec 2022 · 464 MW · 35 16 Dec 2022 · 308 MW · 64 17 Dec 2022 · 699 MW · 40 18 Dec 2022 · 322 MW · 51 20 Dec 2022 · 31 MW · 9 21 Dec 2022 · 17 MW · 9 22 Dec 2022 · 1,820 MW · 127 23 Dec 2022 · 2,909 MW · 168 24 Dec 2022 · 397 MW · 87 25 Dec 2022 · 61 MW · 9 26 Dec 2022 · 33 MW · 12 27 Dec 2022 · 454 MW · 57 28 Dec 2022 · 99 MW · 31
6 Dec 9 Dec 13 Dec 16 Dec 20 Dec 23 Dec 26 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

37°high
53km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.1 mm on 29 Dec.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 297 ha in 2019, 6,601 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,351 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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. Poconé 31,217 inhabitants where it started
    7,357 ha reached on 6 Dec
    0.4 %
  2. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants
    9 ha
    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)
6 Dec 33.6 °C 55 % 39 km/h 4.5 mm Very low 1
7 Dec 34.0 °C 52 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 4
8 Dec 35.5 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Low 6
9 Dec 37.0 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
10 Dec 32.5 °C 54 % 41 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 4
11 Dec 31.2 °C 62 % 38 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 1
12 Dec 34.3 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Low 6
13 Dec 34.4 °C 44 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
14 Dec 34.2 °C 53 % 28 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 3
15 Dec 36.4 °C 45 % 25 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 2
16 Dec 29.7 °C 68 % 22 km/h 1.5 mm Very low 1
17 Dec 35.7 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
18 Dec 30.2 °C 62 % 33 km/h 17.5 mm Very low 0
19 Dec 31.2 °C 64 % 21 km/h 13.1 mm Very low 0
20 Dec 32.7 °C 60 % 18 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 0
21 Dec 33.6 °C 53 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 2
22 Dec 34.5 °C 48 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
23 Dec 34.1 °C 52 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm Low 6
24 Dec 29.7 °C 64 % 24 km/h 8.7 mm Very low 0
25 Dec 30.9 °C 65 % 22 km/h 8.2 mm Very low 0
26 Dec 33.5 °C 52 % 18 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 0
27 Dec 34.5 °C 52 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
28 Dec 29.9 °C 74 % 25 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 0
29 Dec after 30.2 °C 67 % 21 km/h 12.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Nov 2022
After · 4 Jan 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 23 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 85 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak85 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10122 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
45678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 960Every 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 Poconé fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 December 2022 and 28 December 2022: 23 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 7,298 hectares (73.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Poconé (7,357 ha, 0.4 %); Cáceres (9 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 960 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.