Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Uruçuí fire, August 2023 Uruçuí

Out · last detection 18 Aug 2023, 16:14 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2023 in Uruçuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,264 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 705th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 382 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Uruçuí · 2026Uruçuí · 2022Uruçuí · 2017Uruçuí · 2023

Burnt area
3,264ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
8 Aug 2023 – 18 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Aug
2023
Heat detections
166
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
172MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug18 Aug
18 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 2023 · 270 MW · 14 9 Aug 2023 · 416 MW · 39 10 Aug 2023 · 174 MW · 21 11 Aug 2023 · 83 MW · 6 12 Aug 2023 · 97 MW · 6 13 Aug 2023 · 204 MW · 17 14 Aug 2023 · 130 MW · 10 15 Aug 2023 · 79 MW · 8 16 Aug 2023 · 203 MW · 14 17 Aug 2023 · 200 MW · 20 18 Aug 2023 · 37 MW · 11
8 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 12 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 18 Aug

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
46km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,834 ha in 2017, 1,555 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,353 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Uruçuí 25,203 inhabitants where it started
    3,286 ha reached on 8 Aug
    0.4 %

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)
8 Aug 36.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Aug 35.3 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Aug 34.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Aug 34.4 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Aug 34.3 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Aug 33.9 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Aug 33.8 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Aug 33.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Aug 34.4 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Aug 34.4 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Aug 35.1 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Aug after 35.0 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Aug after 35.7 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Aug after 37.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Aug after 36.9 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Aug after 35.3 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Aug after 37.0 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Aug after 36.5 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Aug after 34.4 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
27 Aug after 35.3 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Aug after 32.9 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Aug after 32.7 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
30 Aug after 35.2 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Aug after 34.8 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
1 Sept after 33.9 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
2 Sept after 35.0 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Sept after 35.7 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept after 36.2 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2023
After · 25 Aug 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 12 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
6789101112131415161718192021
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 · 166Every 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 Uruçuí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 August 2023 and 18 August 2023: 11 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 3,264 hectares (32.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Uruçuí (3,286 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 166 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.

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.