How long did the Portel fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2026 and 3 November 2026: 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 19,925 hectares (199.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Portel (20,069 ha, 0.8 %).

Is the Portel fire still active?

No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 17:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2026-10-03 → 2026-11-03

Portel fire, 3 October 2026 Portel

Dying down · last detection 3 Nov 2026, 17:36 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2026 in Portel, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,925 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 98th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1114 with a page). Number 36 in Brazil in 2026, of 783.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Portel · 2022 Portel · 2022 Portel · 2026 Portel · 2019

Is it still active?

No detections since 3 Nov 2026, 17:36 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 19,925ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 32days; 3 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 3 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 1,380; in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 413MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct3 Nov

Play back 3 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 18 Oct 23 Oct 28 Oct 1 Nov 2 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

35°high

38km/h · peak gust

39%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,337 ha in 2020, 4,313 ha in 2022, 598 ha in 2023, 2,120 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,119 ha that had burned before.

3,106 ha Portel fire, October 2022 4,574 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (199 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

Portel 62,503 inhabitants where it started

20,069 ha reached on 3 Oct

0.8 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
3 Oct	34.4 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
4 Oct	34.2 °C	46 %	32 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 16
5 Oct	32.2 °C	58 %	29 km/h	4.1 mm	Very low 5
6 Oct	33.5 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 16
7 Oct	33.9 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21
8 Oct	34.0 °C	48 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 21
9 Oct	34.2 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
10 Oct	34.2 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
11 Oct	33.9 °C	49 %	29 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
12 Oct	34.4 °C	45 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
13 Oct	33.6 °C	49 %	26 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
14 Oct	33.8 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
15 Oct	34.4 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Oct	34.5 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
17 Oct	32.8 °C	55 %	27 km/h	4.9 mm	Very low 5
18 Oct	33.3 °C	52 %	29 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 13
19 Oct	33.4 °C	50 %	27 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 5
20 Oct	33.3 °C	51 %	27 km/h	2.2 mm	Very low 5
21 Oct	33.6 °C	44 %	38 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 9
22 Oct	33.7 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 17
23 Oct	34.1 °C	46 %	24 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 17
24 Oct	34.0 °C	52 %	25 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 17
25 Oct	33.9 °C	56 %	33 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 9
26 Oct	34.6 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 19
27 Oct	34.7 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
28 Oct	35.1 °C	44 %	36 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 12
29 Oct	32.9 °C	53 %	24 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 15
30 Oct	34.4 °C	46 %	31 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 19
31 Oct	35.3 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
1 Nov	34.0 °C	47 %	33 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
2 Nov	34.3 °C	50 %	31 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 13
3 Nov	34.2 °C	47 %	34 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 11
4 Nov after	34.7 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Sept 2026

After · 3 Nov 2026

Before After

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 9 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 192 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak192 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10196 µg/m³

Optical depth1.30

WHO 15

123456789

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 · 1,380Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Portel fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2026 and 3 November 2026: 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 19,925 hectares (199.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Portel (20,069 ha, 0.8 %).
Is the Portel fire still active?: No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 17:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

3 November 2026 Area: 14,435 → 19,889 ha.
3 November 2026 The page “Portel, 18 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
2 November 2026 Area: 6,892 → 14,435 ha.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,380 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.