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Rosário Oeste fire, 5 August 2019 Rosário Oeste, Barra do Bugres

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2019, 04:16 UTC

The fire started on 5 August 2019 in Rosário Oeste, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,179 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 255th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1872 with a page). Number 86 in Brazil in 2019, of 973.

Burnt area
15,179ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
5 Aug 2019 – 20 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
5 Aug
2019
Heat detections
557
in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
214MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Aug20 Aug
21 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

5 Aug 2019 · 9 MW · 1 6 Aug 2019 · 41 MW · 6 7 Aug 2019 · 72 MW · 17 8 Aug 2019 · 25 MW · 16 9 Aug 2019 · 259 MW · 20 10 Aug 2019 · 164 MW · 14 11 Aug 2019 · 1,437 MW · 113 12 Aug 2019 · 385 MW · 104 13 Aug 2019 · 474 MW · 76 14 Aug 2019 · 106 MW · 39 15 Aug 2019 · 153 MW · 39 16 Aug 2019 · 33 MW · 11 17 Aug 2019 · 224 MW · 39 18 Aug 2019 · 170 MW · 47 19 Aug 2019 · 11 MW · 3 20 Aug 2019 · 66 MW · 11 21 Aug 2019 · 3 MW · 1
5 Aug 11 Aug 17 Aug 21 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
46km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.6% of the area of London (152 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
    12,992 ha reached on 5 Aug
    1.8 %
  2. 2,299 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.4 %

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 area0.33 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.33 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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 55 % of the area in Brazil

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Aug 26.3 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Aug 30.7 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Aug 31.4 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Aug 31.2 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Aug 31.2 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Aug 29.9 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Aug 31.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Aug 32.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Aug 31.0 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Aug 23.6 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug 29.6 °C 40 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Aug 32.5 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Aug 33.4 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Aug 32.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug 27.6 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
20 Aug 28.5 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Aug after 31.8 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Aug after 33.1 °C 41 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug after 32.5 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
24 Aug after 33.3 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Aug after 33.4 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug after 32.0 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Aug after 25.5 °C 54 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
28 Aug after 32.2 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Aug after 32.9 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Aug after 34.9 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 26.2, a minimum humidity of 40% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.

FWI at the start 26.2
Minimum humidity 40 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Poconé fire, August 2021
4,156 ha 21 days FWI 31.7 Min. humidity 42 % 164 km away, in 2021

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.1 mm on 9 Sept.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
46km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 20 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 · 29 Jul 2019
After · 27 Aug 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 · 557Every 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 5 August 2019 to 20 August 2019 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 August 2019 to 20 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,179 hectares (151.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rosário Oeste (12,992 ha, 1.8 %); Barra do Bugres (2,299 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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. Start date: 6 August 2019 → 5 August 2019.

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 August 2019 to 20 August 2019. 557 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.