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Poxoréu fire, 10 September 2020 Poxoréu, Juscimeira, Rondonópolis

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2020, 16:42 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2020 in Poxoréu, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,681 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 143th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 61 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Poxoréu · 2019Juscimeira · 2024Rondonópolis · 2024Poxoréu · 2017

Burnt area
24,681ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
10 Sept 2020 – 19 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
10 Sept
2020
Heat detections
795
in a single hotspot: 394 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept19 Sept
19 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2020 · 4 MW · 4 11 Sept 2020 · 472 MW · 4 12 Sept 2020 · 6,848 MW · 123 13 Sept 2020 · 14,839 MW · 282 14 Sept 2020 · 724 MW · 113 15 Sept 2020 · 565 MW · 57 16 Sept 2020 · 2,859 MW · 134 17 Sept 2020 · 336 MW · 61 18 Sept 2020 · 47 MW · 16 19 Sept 2020 · 8 MW · 1
10 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
37km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 914 ha in 2017, 1,745 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (247 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. Poxoréu 23,283 inhabitants where it started
    21,311 ha reached on 10 Sept
    3.1 %
  2. Juscimeira 11,480 inhabitants
    3,185 ha reached on 15 Sept
    1.2 %
  3. Rondonópolis 244,911 inhabitants
    343 ha reached on 18 Sept
    0.1 %

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 area4.8 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.8 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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)
10 Sept 40.2 °C 5 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
11 Sept 39.7 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
12 Sept 39.7 °C 5 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
13 Sept 38.9 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
14 Sept 38.4 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Sept 38.3 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Sept 39.0 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Sept 38.6 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Sept 38.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept 39.9 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Sept after 34.8 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 35.1 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
22 Sept after 32.9 °C 39 % 23 km/h 6.5 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2020
After · 26 Sept 2020

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 · 795Every 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 Poxoréu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2020 to 19 September 2020 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2020 to 18 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 24,681 hectares (246.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Poxoréu (21,311 ha, 3.1 %); Juscimeira (3,185 ha, 1.2 %); Rondonópolis (343 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
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.
  1. Last day with fire: 18 September 2020 → 19 September 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 September 2020 to 18 September 2020. 795 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.