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Rio Sono fire, 12 September 2017 Rio Sono

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2017, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2017 in Rio Sono, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,040 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 91th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 93 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rio Sono · 2020Rio Sono · 2025Rio Sono · 2024Rio Sono · 2024

Burnt area
16,040ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
12 Sept 2017 – 22 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Sept
2017
Heat detections
520
in a single hotspot: 289 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
783MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept22 Sept
22 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2017 · 20 MW · 2 13 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1 15 Sept 2017 · 1,031 MW · 53 16 Sept 2017 · 3,394 MW · 230 17 Sept 2017 · 1,754 MW · 144 18 Sept 2017 · 609 MW · 49 19 Sept 2017 · 215 MW · 33 20 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 3 22 Sept 2017 · 12 MW · 5
12 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 22 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

39°high
52km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 838 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (160 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. Rio Sono 4,841 inhabitants where it started
    16,132 ha reached on 12 Sept
    2.5 %

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 area0.15 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 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)
12 Sept 36.6 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
13 Sept 36.9 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Sept 37.5 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Sept 37.3 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Sept 35.9 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Sept 36.8 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Sept 37.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Sept 39.1 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Sept 38.3 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Sept 35.0 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Sept 36.6 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Sept after 37.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Sept after 37.4 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Sept after 38.6 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept after 38.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept after 38.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Sept after 39.9 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Sept after 40.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Sept after 37.8 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Oct after 37.1 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Oct after 39.6 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2017
After · 29 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 · 520Every 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 Rio Sono fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2017 to 22 September 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 September 2017 to 18 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,040 hectares (160.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Rio Sono (16,132 ha, 2.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 18 September 2017 → 22 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 15 September 2017 → 12 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 15 September 2017 to 18 September 2017. 520 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.