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Ribeirão Cascalheira fire, June 2017 Ribeirão Cascalheira

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2017, 16:30 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2017 in Ribeirão Cascalheira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,968 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1099th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 483 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2017Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2020Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2019Bom Jesus do Araguaia · 2024

Burnt area
4,968ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
30 Jun 2017 – 15 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Jun
2017
Heat detections
382
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
426MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun15 Jul
15 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2017 · 1,194 MW · 46 1 Jul 2017 · 887 MW · 49 2 Jul 2017 · 860 MW · 47 3 Jul 2017 · 1,156 MW · 52 4 Jul 2017 · 352 MW · 29 5 Jul 2017 · 1,043 MW · 63 6 Jul 2017 · 610 MW · 47 7 Jul 2017 · 185 MW · 28 8 Jul 2017 · 27 MW · 5 9 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 2 11 Jul 2017 · 15 MW · 3 12 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 13 Jul 2017 · 11 MW · 2 14 Jul 2017 · 14 MW · 4 15 Jul 2017 · 39 MW · 4
30 Jun 3 Jul 6 Jul 9 Jul 13 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
42km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (50 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. Ribeirão Cascalheira 10,089 inhabitants where it started
    4,993 ha reached on 30 Jun
    0.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.67 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.67 hectares of 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)
30 Jun 32.7 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Jul 34.2 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Jul 33.6 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Jul 33.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Jul 31.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Jul 30.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Jul 30.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Jul 32.4 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Jul 32.6 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Jul 32.0 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Jul 31.8 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Jul 31.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jul 33.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul 33.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Jul 33.0 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jul 32.1 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Jul after 32.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Jul after 32.3 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul after 30.1 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul after 32.1 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jul after 33.8 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul after 34.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul after 35.0 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jul after 35.3 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Jul after 34.1 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Jul after 34.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2017
After · 22 Jul 2017

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 · 382Every 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 Ribeirão Cascalheira fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 June 2017 to 15 July 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 June 2017 to 8 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,968 hectares (49.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ribeirão Cascalheira (4,993 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 July 2017 → 15 July 2017.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 June 2017 to 8 July 2017. 382 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.

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.