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AR · Argentina · –

Tafí del Valle fire, October 2024 Tafí del Valle

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2024, 19:09 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2024 in Tafí del Valle, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,201 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Catamarca since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 67 in Argentina in 2024, of 140.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,201ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
23 Oct 2024 – 24 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
23 Oct
2024
Heat detections
94
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct24 Oct
24 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2024 · 5 MW · 1 24 Oct 2024 · 2,008 MW · 93
23 Oct 24 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

21°high
41km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 25 Oct.

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 1.4% of the area of London (22 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. Tafí del Valle where it started
    2,207 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.9 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
23 Oct 21.3 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 1
24 Oct 18.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
25 Oct after 22.4 °C 8 % 48 km/h 3.3 mm Moderate 14

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 0.9, a minimum humidity of 20% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 14.

FWI at the start 0.9
Minimum humidity 20 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Santa María fire, October 2019
1,913 ha 3 days FWI 5.5 Min. humidity 16 % 43 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.4 mm on 13 Oct.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 14. 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

3.3 mmfirst rain
25 Octthe day after it ended
41km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 24 Oct, and on 25 Oct 3.3 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 · 16 Oct 2024
After · 31 Oct 2024

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 23 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1020 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
21 Oct23 Oct25 Oct27 Oct
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 · 94Every 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 Argentina

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tafí del Valle fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2024 to 24 October 2024 (2 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 October 2024 to 24 October 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,201 hectares (22.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tafí del Valle (2,207 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 21.3 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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: 911 · 100 · 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: 24 October 2024 → 23 October 2024.

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 911 · 100.

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 24 October 2024 to 24 October 2024. 94 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 2025, 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.