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PY · Paraguay ·

San Miguel fire, 17 January 2022 San Miguel, Santa Maria

Out · last detection 17 Jan 2022, 18:26 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2022 in San Miguel, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,761 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in MISIONES since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 146 in Paraguay in 2022, of 184.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sapucai · 2020San Miguel · 2020San Miguel · 2022Fulgencio Yegros · 2022

Burnt area
1,761ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
17 Jan 2022 – 17 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
17 Jan
2022
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
69
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan17 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jan 2022 · 380 MW · 50

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
60km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 mm on 27 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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. San Miguel where it started
    1,312 ha reached on 17 Jan
    2.2 %
  2. Santa Maria
    457 ha reached on 17 Jan
    1.2 %

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 area0.10 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 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 Extreme FWI: 11 % of the area in Paraguay Strong wind: 23 % of the area in Paraguay

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Jan 39.3 °C 29 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
18 Jan after 39.4 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Jan after 38.8 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Jan after 38.3 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
21 Jan after 38.8 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 54
22 Jan after 39.5 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Jan after 40.4 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Jan after 40.6 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Jan after 39.6 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Jan after 38.1 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 41
27 Jan after 29.7 °C 62 % 44 km/h 8.1 mm Moderate 13

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 69.0, a minimum humidity of 29% and 7 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 11.

FWI at the start 69.0
Minimum humidity 29 %
Days without rain 7
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Sapucai fire, September 2020
2,237 ha 7 days FWI 66.3 Min. humidity 20 % 93 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 8 Oct.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 11. 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

8.1 mmfirst rain
27 Jan10 days after it ended
60km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 Jan, and on 27 Jan 8.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 10 Jan 2022
After · 24 Jan 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.

Detections table · 50Every 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 Paraguay

Frequently asked questions

How long did the San Miguel fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 January 2022 and 17 January 2022: 1 day 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 1,761 hectares (17.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Miguel (1,312 ha, 2.2 %); Santa Maria (457 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, class Extreme.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 132 · 911.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 50 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 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.