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Ribeirão Cascalheira fire, August 2022 Ribeirão Cascalheira

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2022, 04:41 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2022 in Ribeirão Cascalheira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,327 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 814th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 217 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2024Ribeirão Cascalheira · 2020

Burnt area
6,327ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
29 Aug 2022 – 18 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Aug
2022
Heat detections
375
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
203MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug18 Sept
18 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2022 · 39 MW · 3 30 Aug 2022 · 443 MW · 5 31 Aug 2022 · 60 MW · 17 1 Sept 2022 · 64 MW · 16 2 Sept 2022 · 57 MW · 20 3 Sept 2022 · 285 MW · 21 4 Sept 2022 · 209 MW · 12 5 Sept 2022 · 71 MW · 16 6 Sept 2022 · 265 MW · 30 7 Sept 2022 · 1,255 MW · 82 8 Sept 2022 · 241 MW · 48 9 Sept 2022 · 111 MW · 15 10 Sept 2022 · 56 MW · 10 11 Sept 2022 · 98 MW · 24 12 Sept 2022 · 103 MW · 11 13 Sept 2022 · 469 MW · 36 14 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 2 17 Sept 2022 · 13 MW · 5 18 Sept 2022 · 3 MW · 2
29 Aug 1 Sept 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 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

38°high
47km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 19 Sept.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2017, 405 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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
    6,358 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.6 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
29 Aug 36.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Aug 36.0 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Aug 35.2 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
1 Sept 34.6 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Sept 34.2 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Sept 35.6 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept 36.7 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Sept 37.0 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Sept 37.1 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 35.8 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Sept 36.6 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Sept 36.6 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Sept 37.5 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Sept 38.4 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept 38.1 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept 36.8 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept 37.1 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 35.5 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Sept 37.2 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Sept 37.3 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Sept 32.9 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
19 Sept after 34.3 °C 35 % 23 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2022
After · 25 Sept 2022

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 14 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak98 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10140 µg/m³
Optical depth1.09
272829303112345678910111213141516
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 · 375Every 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 29 August 2022 to 18 September 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2022 to 13 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,327 hectares (63.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ribeirão Cascalheira (6,358 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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: 13 September 2022 → 18 September 2022.

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 29 August 2022 to 13 September 2022. 375 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.