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BR · Brazil · –

Rosário Oeste fire, September 2018 Rosário Oeste, Jangada

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2018, 17:26 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2018 in Rosário Oeste, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,735 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1087th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1872 with a page). Number 109 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Burnt area
4,735ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
6 Sept 2018 – 17 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2018
Heat detections
206
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2018 · 45 MW · 2 7 Sept 2018 · 73 MW · 23 8 Sept 2018 · 162 MW · 14 9 Sept 2018 · 83 MW · 14 10 Sept 2018 · 225 MW · 33 11 Sept 2018 · 495 MW · 54 12 Sept 2018 · 192 MW · 32 13 Sept 2018 · 100 MW · 16 14 Sept 2018 · 3 MW · 1 15 Sept 2018 · 6 MW · 1 16 Sept 2018 · 27 MW · 12 17 Sept 2018 · 23 MW · 4
6 Sept 11 Sept 15 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

36°high
38km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 18 Sept.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 599 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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. Rosário Oeste where it started
    2,760 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Jangada 7,426 inhabitants
    2,008 ha reached on 9 Sept
    1.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.11 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 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)
6 Sept 32.4 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Sept 33.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 34.6 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept 36.1 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Sept 35.8 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 36.5 °C 22 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept 36.5 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 35.6 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Sept 31.6 °C 52 % 36 km/h 4.1 mm High 35
15 Sept 33.1 °C 46 % 22 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6
16 Sept 32.5 °C 46 % 37 km/h 9.5 mm Moderate 20
17 Sept 31.1 °C 47 % 30 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 2
18 Sept after 31.3 °C 51 % 31 km/h 1.5 mm Very low 4

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 29.0, a minimum humidity of 25% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 30.

FWI at the start 29.0
Minimum humidity 25 %
Days without rain 10
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Nobres fire, August 2017
5,472 ha 12 days FWI 28.3 Min. humidity 27 % 141 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

13 days
median duration
4,810 ha
median area
17 %
went past 10,000 ha
2.0 mm
rain at the end (median; 19 of 30 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (4,735 ha against a median of 4,810 ha) and lasted 12 days, against 13 days.

In 11 of 30, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.5 mmfirst rain
18 Septthe day after it ended
38km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 Sept, and on 18 Sept 1.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 19 of 30, with a median of 2.0 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2018
After · 24 Sept 2018

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 · 206Every 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 Rosário Oeste fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2018 to 17 September 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2018 to 14 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,735 hectares (47.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rosário Oeste (2,760 ha, 0.4 %); Jangada (2,008 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 30. Their median duration was 13 days and their median area 4,810 ha; 17 % went past 10,000 ha. In 11 of 30, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.

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: 14 September 2018 → 17 September 2018.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 6 September 2018 to 14 September 2018. 206 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.