Burned area
satellite only4,338ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 4 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BR · Brazil · –
Porto de Moz fire, December 2017 Porto de Moz
Out · last detection 12 Dec 2017, 16:21 UTC
The fire started on 4 December 2017 in Porto de Moz, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,338 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 539th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 957 with a page). Number 579 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-25matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only10days
4 Dec 2017 to 13 Dec 2017: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 12 Dec 2017, 16:21 UTC
+− cross-check
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.
Start
satellite only4 Dec 2017
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 4 Dec 2017
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only166
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 163 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 4 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only390MW
Total radiative power on 9 December 2017; hotspots that day: 42.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 9 Dec 2017
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model38.8FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 33.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 4 Dec 2017, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model35.4°C · 47% RH
High of 35.4 °C and minimum humidity of 47% on 12 December 2017; gusts of 46 km/h on 5 December 2017.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 4 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 12 December 2017 → 13 December 2017.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 25 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 4,338 ha
- Dates
- 4 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
- Name
- Porto de Moz
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/porto-de-moz-2017-12?v=2026-10-25A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire porto-de-moz-2017-12.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-12-04 | 1 | 5 | 35.1 | 25.1 | 44 | 17.3 | 43.9 | 0 | 38.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-05 | 15 | 228 | 34.8 | 26.2 | 47 | 18.3 | 45.7 | 0 | 37 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-06 | 21 | 301 | 34.3 | 26.7 | 51 | 12.8 | 37.8 | 0.1 | 29.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-07 | 2 | 2 | 34 | 26.3 | 52 | 14.6 | 30.2 | 0 | 31 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-08 | 8 | 40 | 34.8 | 26.6 | 52 | 12.5 | 38.2 | 0 | 28.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-09 | 42 | 390 | 34.2 | 26.4 | 50 | 13.1 | 37.1 | 0.2 | 32.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-10 | 30 | 360 | 35.1 | 25.8 | 49 | 12.9 | 32.8 | 0.2 | 30.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-11 | 32 | 348 | 35.1 | 26.7 | 49 | 12.3 | 34.9 | 0.2 | 30.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-12 | 15 | 70 | 35.4 | 26.6 | 47 | 14.1 | 36 | 0 | 30.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2017-12-13 | 0 | 0 | 33.4 | 26.7 | 56 | 13.1 | 34.2 | 7.5 | 8.8 | bajo | 1 |
| 2017-12-14 | 0 | 0 | 28.3 | 24.3 | 83 | 11.6 | 22.3 | 24.4 | 0 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 4,338ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 4 Dec 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Dec
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 166
- in a single hotspot: 163 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 194MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
4 Dec13 Dec
12 Dec 2017
How it evolved, day by day
4 Dec
6 Dec
9 Dec
12 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
35°high
46km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity
It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 24.4 mm on 14 Dec.
This area had burned before
31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,430 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,352 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
4,366 ha reached on 4 Dec0.2 %
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 2015Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Dec | 35.1 °C | 44 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Dec | 34.8 °C | 47 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Dec | 34.3 °C | 51 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Dec | 34.0 °C | 52 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Dec | 34.8 °C | 52 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 9 Dec | 34.2 °C | 50 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Dec | 35.1 °C | 49 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 11 Dec | 35.1 °C | 49 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 31 |
| 12 Dec | 35.4 °C | 47 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Dec | 33.4 °C | 56 % | 34 km/h | 7.5 mm | Low 9 |
| 14 Dec after | 28.3 °C | 83 % | 22 km/h | 24.4 mm | Very low 0 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 38.8, a minimum humidity of 44% and 33 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 12.
FWI at the start
38.8
Minimum humidity
44 %
Days without rain
33
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Porto de Moz fire, December 2017
4,338 ha
10 days
FWI 38.8
Min. humidity 44 %
Prainha fire, November 2024
3,241 ha
13 days
FWI 31.6
Min. humidity 45 %
114 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.3 mm on 5 Dec.
Vitória do Jari fire, November 2024
5,517 ha
29 days
FWI 36.1
Min. humidity 43 %
131 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.9 mm on 4 Dec.
Santarém fire, September 2023
3,529 ha
8 days
FWI 34.1
Min. humidity 46 %
230 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.9 mm on 16 Sept.
Porto de Moz fire, November 2024
4,351 ha
28 days
FWI 35.4
Min. humidity 40 %
16 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 5.7 mm on 7 Dec.
Melgaço fire, November 2024
3,245 ha
15 days
FWI 35.6
Min. humidity 40 %
171 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.4 mm on 1 Dec.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 12. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
24.4 mmfirst rain
14 Decthe day after it ended
46km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 13 Dec, and on 14 Dec 24.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 27 Nov 2017
After · 20 Dec 2017
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 166Every 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
- 4,351 haPorto de Moz9 November 2024 · 28 days · 16 km away
- 14,178 haPorto de Moz13 November 2024 · 28 days · 18 km away
- 11,417 haPorto de Moz25 November 2016 · 23 days · 19 km away
- 11,383 haPorto de Moz8 November 2023 · 18 days · 19 km away
- 4,383 haPorto de Moz11 November 2023 · 10 days · 28 km away
- 4,527 haPorto de MozOctober 2024 · 17 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Porto de Moz fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 December 2017 to 13 December 2017 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 December 2017 to 12 December 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,338 hectares (43.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Porto de Moz (4,366 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 12 December 2017 → 13 December 2017.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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 4 December 2017 to 12 December 2017. 166 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.