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PY · Paraguay · –

Villa Hayes fire, 1 July 2020 Villa Hayes

Out · last detection 5 Jul 2020, 04:37 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2020 in Villa Hayes, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,458 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 326th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 709 with a page). Number 194 in Paraguay in 2020, of 422.

Burnt area
2,458ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
1 Jul 2020 – 5 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Jul
2020
Heat detections
111
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
353MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul5 Jul
5 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2020 · 203 MW · 16 2 Jul 2020 · 35 MW · 5 3 Jul 2020 · 154 MW · 14 4 Jul 2020 · 1,359 MW · 70 5 Jul 2020 · 14 MW · 6
1 Jul 2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
42km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.9 mm on 7 Jul.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 478 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. Villa Hayes where it started
    2,454 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
1 Jul 19.3 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
2 Jul 18.4 °C 50 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
3 Jul 20.5 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
4 Jul 29.9 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
5 Jul 29.9 °C 52 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 17
6 Jul after 23.2 °C 64 % 29 km/h 0.8 mm Low 9
7 Jul after 17.6 °C 83 % 43 km/h 7.9 mm Very low 1

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 10.8, a minimum humidity of 42% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 19.

FWI at the start 10.8
Minimum humidity 42 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Villa Hayes fire, September 2020
13,889 ha 11 days FWI 11.8 Min. humidity 43 % 17 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.0 mm on 7 Oct.

What happened to them

4 days
median duration
1,860 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
4.2 mm
rain at the end (median; 16 of 19 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (2,458 ha against a median of 1,860 ha) and lasted 5 days, against 4 days.

In 3 of 19, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.2 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

7.9 mmfirst rain
7 Jul2 days after it ended
42km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 5 Jul, and on 7 Jul 7.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 16 of 19, with a median of 4.2 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jun 2020
After · 12 Jul 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 · 111Every 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 Paraguay

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Villa Hayes fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 July 2020 and 5 July 2020: 5 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 2,458 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Villa Hayes (2,454 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 19. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 1,860 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 3 of 19, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.2 mm.

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: 132 · 911 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

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

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 132 · 911.

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. 111 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 2020, 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.