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Serra Nova Dourada fire, August 2019 Serra Nova Dourada, Alto Boa Vista, Bom Jesus do Araguaia

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2019, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2019 in Serra Nova Dourada, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,756 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 80th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 20 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serra Nova Dourada · 2016Alto Boa Vista · 2018Alto Boa Vista · 2025Alto Boa Vista · 2016

Burnt area
34,756ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
30 Aug 2019 – 25 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
30 Aug
2019
Heat detections
1,934
in a single hotspot: 221 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
966MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug25 Sept
25 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2019 · 119 MW · 13 31 Aug 2019 · 339 MW · 37 1 Sept 2019 · 226 MW · 42 2 Sept 2019 · 190 MW · 20 3 Sept 2019 · 245 MW · 23 4 Sept 2019 · 896 MW · 69 5 Sept 2019 · 2,460 MW · 115 6 Sept 2019 · 866 MW · 67 7 Sept 2019 · 1,189 MW · 87 8 Sept 2019 · 2,155 MW · 144 9 Sept 2019 · 2,861 MW · 247 10 Sept 2019 · 1,957 MW · 233 11 Sept 2019 · 3,906 MW · 245 12 Sept 2019 · 1,552 MW · 109 13 Sept 2019 · 3,054 MW · 114 14 Sept 2019 · 708 MW · 144 15 Sept 2019 · 526 MW · 115 16 Sept 2019 · 251 MW · 29 17 Sept 2019 · 148 MW · 13 18 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 1 19 Sept 2019 · 9 MW · 4 22 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 2 23 Sept 2019 · 12 MW · 1 24 Sept 2019 · 472 MW · 58 25 Sept 2019 · 4 MW · 2
30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 19 Sept 25 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

41°high
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,437 ha in 2016, 6,338 ha in 2017, 28 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 22% of the area of London (348 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. Serra Nova Dourada 1,800 inhabitants where it started
    31,044 ha reached on 30 Aug
    21 %
  2. Alto Boa Vista 5,715 inhabitants
    2,000 ha reached on 10 Sept
    0.9 %
  3. Bom Jesus do Araguaia 7,280 inhabitants
    1,916 ha reached on 11 Sept
    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 area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (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)
30 Aug 38.2 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Aug 38.1 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Sept 38.8 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Sept 39.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Sept 39.9 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Sept 40.0 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Sept 39.5 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Sept 38.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept 37.3 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Sept 37.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 38.2 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Sept 38.4 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 39.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Sept 38.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Sept 40.4 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Sept 40.6 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 39.3 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Sept 38.9 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept 39.3 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Sept 39.2 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept 39.0 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Sept 39.6 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 39.7 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Sept 38.8 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Sept 37.7 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Sept 38.8 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Sept 37.2 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Sept after 33.9 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.9 mm High 29
27 Sept after 34.8 °C 38 % 28 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2019
After · 2 Oct 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 · 1,934Every 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 Serra Nova Dourada fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2019 to 25 September 2019 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 August 2019 to 19 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,756 hectares (347.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Serra Nova Dourada (31,044 ha, 21 %); Alto Boa Vista (2,000 ha, 0.9 %); Bom Jesus do Araguaia (1,916 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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. Last day with fire: 19 September 2019 → 25 September 2019.

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 30 August 2019 to 19 September 2019. 1,934 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.