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Ribeirão Cascalheira fire, 3 September 2017 Ribeirão Cascalheira

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2017, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Ribeirão Cascalheira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,424 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 352th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 133 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
12,424ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
3 Sept 2017 – 11 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2017
Heat detections
492
in a single hotspot: 293 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept11 Sept
11 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2017 · 2,352 MW · 85 4 Sept 2017 · 5,280 MW · 185 5 Sept 2017 · 1,133 MW · 111 6 Sept 2017 · 370 MW · 32 7 Sept 2017 · 270 MW · 50 8 Sept 2017 · 39 MW · 12 9 Sept 2017 · 50 MW · 11 10 Sept 2017 · 15 MW · 1 11 Sept 2017 · 130 MW · 5
3 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 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
51km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 823 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (124 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
    12,485 ha reached on 3 Sept
    1.1 %

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 2015
Built-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)
3 Sept 36.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Sept 35.1 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
5 Sept 36.5 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Sept 37.5 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Sept 37.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 37.5 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 39.7 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Sept 39.5 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Sept 39.7 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Sept after 38.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Sept after 37.6 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Sept after 38.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Sept after 38.2 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Sept after 38.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Sept after 37.5 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Sept after 38.0 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Sept after 39.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Sept after 39.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Sept after 33.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2017
After · 18 Sept 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 · 492Every 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 3 September 2017 to 11 September 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2017 to 9 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,424 hectares (124.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ribeirão Cascalheira (12,485 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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: 9 September 2017 → 11 September 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 3 September 2017 to 9 September 2017. 492 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.