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Portel fire, 13 October 2023 Portel

Out · last detection 6 Nov 2023, 05:16 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2023 in Portel, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,514 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 375th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1100 with a page). Number 110 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Portel · 2020Portel · 2020Portel · 2026Portel · 2026

Burnt area
6,514ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
13 Oct 2023 – 6 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Oct
2023
Heat detections
663
in a single hotspot: 177 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
266MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct6 Nov
6 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2023 · 591 MW · 40 14 Oct 2023 · 363 MW · 47 15 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 1 16 Oct 2023 · 161 MW · 13 17 Oct 2023 · 80 MW · 35 18 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 1 19 Oct 2023 · 47 MW · 6 20 Oct 2023 · 40 MW · 5 22 Oct 2023 · 7 MW · 3 23 Oct 2023 · 3 MW · 4 24 Oct 2023 · 23 MW · 5 25 Oct 2023 · 16 MW · 3 26 Oct 2023 · 881 MW · 22 27 Oct 2023 · 400 MW · 55 28 Oct 2023 · 328 MW · 60 29 Oct 2023 · 98 MW · 12 30 Oct 2023 · 228 MW · 18 31 Oct 2023 · 520 MW · 59 1 Nov 2023 · 475 MW · 54 2 Nov 2023 · 799 MW · 9 3 Nov 2023 · 281 MW · 77 4 Nov 2023 · 591 MW · 45 5 Nov 2023 · 383 MW · 62 6 Nov 2023 · 73 MW · 27
13 Oct 17 Oct 22 Oct 26 Oct 30 Oct 3 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
36km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 7 Nov.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 525 ha in 2016, 1,588 ha in 2017, 456 ha in 2018, 1,110 ha in 2019, 3,790 ha in 2020, 1,870 ha in 2021, 4,524 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,763 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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. Portel 62,503 inhabitants where it started
    6,562 ha reached on 13 Oct
    0.3 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Oct 36.6 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
14 Oct 36.9 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
15 Oct 35.4 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
16 Oct 35.3 °C 46 % 25 km/h 5.3 mm Low 7
17 Oct 35.7 °C 44 % 27 km/h 2.9 mm Low 9
18 Oct 35.3 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 16
19 Oct 36.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
20 Oct 36.9 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
21 Oct 34.8 °C 51 % 25 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 19
22 Oct 34.4 °C 53 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
23 Oct 34.6 °C 48 % 35 km/h 2.5 mm Low 9
24 Oct 34.1 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
25 Oct 34.3 °C 50 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 17
26 Oct 35.5 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Oct 36.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Oct 36.1 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Oct 34.6 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
30 Oct 34.6 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Oct 37.5 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Nov 35.1 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Nov 36.4 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
3 Nov 36.2 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Nov 35.5 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Nov 34.4 °C 52 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
6 Nov 35.3 °C 50 % 30 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Nov after 32.0 °C 60 % 32 km/h 2.2 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2023
After · 13 Nov 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 6 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 160 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak160 µg/m³
Days over the guideline29 days
PM10229 µg/m³
Optical depth1.80
111213141516171819202122232425262728293031123456789
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 · 663Every 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 Portel fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 October 2023 and 6 November 2023: 25 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 6,514 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Portel (6,562 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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
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. 663 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 2025, 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.