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Uruará fire, 12 November 2023 Uruará

Out · last detection 20 Nov 2023, 16:52 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2023 in Uruará, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,872 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 353th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1096 with a page). Number 99 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Burnt area
6,872ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
12 Nov 2023 – 19 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Nov
2023
Heat detections
335
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Nov 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov19 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

121314151617181920

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
42km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 26 Nov.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,055 ha in 2016, 448 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Uruará 43,558 inhabitants where it started
    6,916 ha reached on 6 Nov
    0.6 %

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)
5 Nov 34.2 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Nov 34.5 °C 52 % 34 km/h 3.3 mm Low 6
7 Nov 31.7 °C 64 % 27 km/h 13.1 mm Very low 1
8 Nov 33.6 °C 56 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 4
9 Nov 35.2 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 12
10 Nov 34.8 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 15
11 Nov 33.6 °C 55 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
12 Nov 35.7 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Nov 36.4 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
14 Nov 37.3 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
15 Nov 36.5 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
16 Nov 35.7 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
17 Nov 35.5 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
18 Nov 35.4 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Nov 35.3 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
20 Nov after 35.7 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
21 Nov after 34.6 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
22 Nov after 35.1 °C 47 % 31 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 14
23 Nov after 32.3 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 17
24 Nov after 35.3 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
25 Nov after 33.7 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
26 Nov after 33.8 °C 48 % 23 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Nov 2023
After · 26 Nov 2023

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 15 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 242 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 114: 7.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak242 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10346 µg/m³
Optical depth2.37
10111213141516171819202122
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 · 335Every 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 12 November 2023 and 19 November 2023: 8 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 6,872 hectares (68.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Uruará (6,916 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 42 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
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.

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.