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Uruará fire, September 2020 Uruará

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2020, 17:17 UTC

The fire started on 28 September 2020 in Uruará, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,063 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1068th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1095 with a page). Number 927 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Burnt area
3,063ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
28 Sept 2020 – 16 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Sept
2020
Heat detections
179
in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Energy released
1.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Sept16 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2829301234578910121314

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
37km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 22 Oct.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,311 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Uruará 43,558 inhabitants where it started
    3,083 ha reached on 28 Sept
    0.3 %

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)
28 Sept 34.9 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm Low 10
29 Sept 34.0 °C 52 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
30 Sept 35.5 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
1 Oct 35.0 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Oct 35.7 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
3 Oct 35.9 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Oct 36.6 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
5 Oct 36.7 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Oct 35.1 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 15
7 Oct 34.9 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 17
8 Oct 36.0 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
9 Oct 36.0 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Oct 37.3 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Oct 33.3 °C 53 % 30 km/h 2.6 mm Low 6
12 Oct 34.2 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
13 Oct 34.3 °C 51 % 34 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 12
14 Oct 33.8 °C 54 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Oct 34.8 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
16 Oct 35.3 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Oct after 35.7 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
18 Oct after 34.5 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
19 Oct after 35.1 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
20 Oct after 34.4 °C 55 % 33 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 16
21 Oct after 35.0 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
22 Oct after 34.5 °C 49 % 31 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Sept 2020
After · 23 Oct 2020

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 · 179Every 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 Uruará fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 September 2020 and 16 October 2020: 19 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 3,063 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Uruará (3,083 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
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

Satellite cross-check

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
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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.

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.