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Ribeirão Cascalheira fire, 25 August 2019 Ribeirão Cascalheira, Cocalinho

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2019, 17:14 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2019 in Ribeirão Cascalheira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,484 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 198th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 52 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2017Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2024Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2026Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2019

Burnt area
19,484ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
25 Aug 2019 – 10 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
25 Aug
2019
Heat detections
802
in a single hotspot: 203 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
553MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2019 · 284 MW · 26 26 Aug 2019 · 752 MW · 128 27 Aug 2019 · 344 MW · 92 28 Aug 2019 · 659 MW · 110 29 Aug 2019 · 428 MW · 69 30 Aug 2019 · 954 MW · 102 31 Aug 2019 · 686 MW · 58 1 Sept 2019 · 547 MW · 44 2 Sept 2019 · 544 MW · 39 3 Sept 2019 · 1,006 MW · 37 4 Sept 2019 · 331 MW · 18 5 Sept 2019 · 649 MW · 15 6 Sept 2019 · 1,878 MW · 24 7 Sept 2019 · 156 MW · 18 8 Sept 2019 · 45 MW · 9 9 Sept 2019 · 48 MW · 6 10 Sept 2019 · 92 MW · 7
25 Aug 28 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 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
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,652 ha in 2016, 10,284 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,305 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (195 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
    19,615 ha reached on 25 Aug
    1.7 %
  2. Cocalinho 6,220 inhabitants
    2 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area0.12 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
25 Aug 36.4 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Aug 36.2 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Aug 36.1 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Aug 36.6 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Aug 37.3 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Aug 38.0 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug 38.2 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept 39.0 °C 20 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Sept 39.5 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 39.9 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 40.0 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Sept 39.8 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 38.4 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 37.6 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Sept 36.9 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept 38.2 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept 38.7 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Sept after 39.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept after 39.6 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept after 40.6 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Sept after 40.6 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept after 39.6 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept after 39.1 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Sept after 39.6 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Sept after 39.7 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept after 39.5 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Sept after 40.6 °C 20 % 23 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 · 18 Aug 2019
After · 17 Sept 2019

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 · 802Every 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 25 August 2019 to 10 September 2019 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2019 to 3 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,484 hectares (194.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ribeirão Cascalheira (19,615 ha, 1.7 %); Cocalinho (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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: 3 September 2019 → 10 September 2019.

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 25 August 2019 to 3 September 2019. 802 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.