How long did the Tamboril do Piauí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2017 to 21 October 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2017 to 21 October 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,084 hectares (50.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tamboril do Piauí (5,117 ha, 3.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-10-05 → 2017-10-21

Tamboril do Piauí fire, October 2017 Tamboril do Piauí

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2017, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2017 in Tamboril do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 337th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 464 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Brejo do Piauí · 2021 Tamboril do Piauí · 2021 Brejo do Piauí · 2020

Burnt area: 5,084ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 5 Oct 2017 – 21 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 5 Oct; 2017
Heat detections: 268; in a single hotspot: 266 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 369MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct21 Oct

Play back 21 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 8 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 16 Oct 18 Oct 20 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

38°high

55km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.6 mm on 31 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Tamboril do Piauí 2,949 inhabitants where it started

5,117 ha reached on 5 Oct

3.2 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.49 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
5 Oct	36.0 °C	26 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
6 Oct	36.0 °C	29 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
7 Oct	35.4 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
8 Oct	35.8 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
9 Oct	36.2 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 Oct	36.2 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
11 Oct	36.0 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
12 Oct	36.5 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Oct	36.8 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Oct	37.5 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Oct	37.4 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
16 Oct	37.0 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
17 Oct	35.9 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
18 Oct	36.3 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
19 Oct	36.5 °C	32 %	55 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 55
20 Oct	36.8 °C	27 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
21 Oct	37.6 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
22 Oct after	36.4 °C	28 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Oct after	37.0 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Oct after	36.1 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 Oct after	37.2 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
26 Oct after	37.1 °C	30 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
27 Oct after	37.8 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Oct after	37.3 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Oct after	38.3 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Oct after	36.6 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
31 Oct after	29.9 °C	62 %	37 km/h	11.6 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Sept 2017

After · 28 Oct 2017

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.

Detections table · 268Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tamboril do Piauí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2017 to 21 October 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 October 2017 to 21 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,084 hectares (50.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tamboril do Piauí (5,117 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 12 October 2017 → 5 October 2017.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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 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 12 October 2017 to 21 October 2017. 268 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned