How long did the San Ignacio fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 21 February 2023: 18 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,613 hectares (86.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San Ignacio (8,654 ha, 5.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

PY · Paraguay · 2023-02-04 → 2023-02-21

San Ignacio fire, 4 February 2023 San Ignacio

Out · last detection 21 Feb 2023, 16:47 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2023 in San Ignacio, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,613 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in MISIONES since 2016 (of 41 with a page). Number 11 in Paraguay in 2023, of 209.

Burnt area: 8,613ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 4 Feb 2023 – 21 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 4 Feb; 2023
Heat detections: 323; in a single hotspot: 175 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 3.8GW; sum of detected power

Play back 21 Feb 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb21 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

45678910111213161718192021

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

59km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.0 mm on 23 Feb.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,306 ha in 2020, 2,594 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,799 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

San Ignacio where it started

8,654 ha reached on 4 Feb

5.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
4 Feb	33.4 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
5 Feb	34.1 °C	29 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
6 Feb	36.8 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Feb	38.3 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Feb	39.1 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Feb	35.0 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 25
10 Feb	35.7 °C	38 %	31 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 17
11 Feb	36.8 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
12 Feb	37.4 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Feb	38.1 °C	39 %	43 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
14 Feb	33.3 °C	51 %	41 km/h	5.5 mm	Low 6
15 Feb	33.0 °C	51 %	26 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 8
16 Feb	33.4 °C	49 %	40 km/h	10.0 mm	Very low 3
17 Feb	24.1 °C	32 %	59 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
18 Feb	24.0 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
19 Feb	28.7 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
20 Feb	33.0 °C	42 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
21 Feb	33.5 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
22 Feb after	34.7 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
23 Feb after	30.8 °C	59 %	35 km/h	12.0 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2023

After · 28 Feb 2023

Before After

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 15 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 160 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak160 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10228 µg/m³

Optical depth2.05

WHO 15

23456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 323Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the San Ignacio fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 21 February 2023: 18 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,613 hectares (86.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San Ignacio (8,654 ha, 5.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (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: 132 · 911

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 132 · 911.

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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.

Where it burned