How long did the Reserva do Cabaçal fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 August 2024 to 24 August 2024 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2024 to 24 August 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,352 hectares (183.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Araputanga (12,570 ha, 7.8 %); Reserva do Cabaçal (2,799 ha, 2.1 %); Barra do Bugres (2,171 ha, 0.4 %); Jauru (906 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2024-08-16 → 2024-08-24

Reserva do Cabaçal fire, August 2024 Araputanga, Reserva do Cabaçal, Barra do Bugres

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2024, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2024 in Reserva do Cabaçal, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,352 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 208th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 159 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Bugres · 2020 Barra do Bugres · 2024 Jauru · 2024 Barra do Bugres · 2020

Burnt area: 18,352ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 16 Aug 2024 – 24 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 4; municipalities
Started on: 16 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 574; in a single hotspot: 418 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 3.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug24 Aug

Play back 24 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 18 Aug 20 Aug 21 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

44km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 140 ha in 2018, 2,886 ha in 2020.

260 ha Barra do Bugres fire, August 2020 7,703 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (184 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

Araputanga 14,786 inhabitants

12,570 ha reached on 16 Aug

7.8 %
Reserva do Cabaçal 2,122 inhabitants where it started

2,799 ha reached on 16 Aug

2.1 %
Barra do Bugres

2,171 ha reached on 17 Aug

0.4 %
Jauru 8,367 inhabitants

906 ha reached on 21 Aug

0.7 %

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 area0.10 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of 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	Danger (FWI)
16 Aug	34.6 °C	26 %	34 km/h	Very high 39
17 Aug	35.8 °C	24 %	34 km/h	Very high 41
18 Aug	36.2 °C	19 %	39 km/h	Very high 43
19 Aug	36.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Very high 43
20 Aug	36.4 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 42
21 Aug	36.2 °C	16 %	44 km/h	Very high 49
22 Aug	35.6 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Very high 49
23 Aug	33.7 °C	25 %	31 km/h	Very high 43
24 Aug	24.7 °C	49 %	42 km/h	High 31
25 Aug after	18.8 °C	50 %	50 km/h	High 29
26 Aug after	23.5 °C	32 %	33 km/h	High 28
27 Aug after	31.2 °C	25 %	20 km/h	High 31
28 Aug after	33.8 °C	21 %	26 km/h	High 36
29 Aug after	36.3 °C	18 %	40 km/h	Very high 49
30 Aug after	35.2 °C	20 %	47 km/h	Extreme 51
31 Aug after	35.3 °C	18 %	35 km/h	Very high 44
1 Sept after	31.1 °C	31 %	37 km/h	Very high 40
2 Sept after	34.4 °C	19 %	25 km/h	Very high 39
3 Sept after	36.4 °C	17 %	42 km/h	Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Aug 2024

After · 31 Aug 2024

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 24 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 69: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM10157 µg/m³

Optical depth2.58

WHO 15

15161718192021222324252627

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 · 574Every 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 Reserva do Cabaçal fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 August 2024 to 24 August 2024 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 August 2024 to 24 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,352 hectares (183.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Araputanga (12,570 ha, 7.8 %); Reserva do Cabaçal (2,799 ha, 2.1 %); Barra do Bugres (2,171 ha, 0.4 %); Jauru (906 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 17 August 2024 → 16 August 2024.

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.

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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?

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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 17 August 2024 to 24 August 2024. 574 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.

Where it burned