How long did the Vera fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 August 2020 and 18 August 2020: 6 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 4,790 hectares (47.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Vera (4,782 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.

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.

AR · Argentina · 2020-08-13 → 2020-08-18

Vera fire, 13 August 2020 Vera

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2020, 18:00 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2020 in Vera, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,790 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Santa Fe since 2016 (of 252 with a page). Number 105 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vera · 2022 Vera · 2020 Vera · 2020 Vera · 2018

Burnt area: 4,790ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 13 Aug 2020 – 18 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 13 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 175; in a single hotspot: 256 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 470MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 19 Aug 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug18 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

13 Aug 14 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 19 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

28°high

32km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 27 Aug.

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% of the area of London (48 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

Vera where it started

4,782 ha reached on 13 Aug

0.2 %

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)
13 Aug	22.0 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Aug	23.3 °C	38 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Aug	22.6 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Aug	23.6 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Aug	26.2 °C	5 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
18 Aug	28.0 °C	15 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Aug after	18.4 °C	22 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
20 Aug after	15.0 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Aug after	18.0 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	21.2 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Aug after	26.7 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Aug after	31.4 °C	30 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
25 Aug after	34.5 °C	27 %	69 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
26 Aug after	34.0 °C	30 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
27 Aug after	22.0 °C	63 %	45 km/h	6.4 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Aug 2020

After · 25 Aug 2020

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 · 175Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Vera fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 August 2020 and 18 August 2020: 6 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 4,790 hectares (47.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Vera (4,782 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
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

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 175 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.

Where it burned