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AR · Argentina · –

Villarino fire, 9 February 2017 Villarino

Out · last detection 12 Feb 2017, 17:32 UTC

The fire started on 9 February 2017 in Villarino, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,611 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 57th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 203 with a page). Number 66 in Argentina in 2017, of 256.

Burnt area
3,611ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
9 Feb 2017 – 12 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
9 Feb
2017
Heat detections
95
in a single hotspot: 356 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Feb12 Feb
12 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Feb 2017 · 4,395 MW · 71 10 Feb 2017 · 75 MW · 7 12 Feb 2017 · 88 MW · 17
9 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb

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
46km/h · peak gust
49%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Villarino 30,745 inhabitants where it started
    3,625 ha reached on 9 Feb
    0.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
9 Feb 28.3 °C 57 % 43 km/h 9.0 mm Very low 2
10 Feb 26.2 °C 64 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 5
11 Feb 30.5 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
12 Feb 29.4 °C 57 % 46 km/h 3.3 mm Low 9
13 Feb after 24.6 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
14 Feb after 24.2 °C 67 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
15 Feb after 27.1 °C 59 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
16 Feb after 32.7 °C 43 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
17 Feb after 27.5 °C 17 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Feb after 27.2 °C 17 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Feb after 32.9 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Feb after 32.2 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Feb after 32.6 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Feb after 34.5 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 2.0, a minimum humidity of 57% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 4.

FWI at the start 2.0
Minimum humidity 57 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Hucal fire, January 2017
6,042 ha 7 days FWI 7.3 Min. humidity 60 % 248 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 31 Jan.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 4. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
46km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 12 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 · 2 Feb 2017
After · 19 Feb 2017

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 · 95Every 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 Argentina

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Villarino fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 February 2017 and 12 February 2017: 4 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 3,611 hectares (36.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Villarino (3,625 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 49 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
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 · 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 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. 95 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 2015, 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 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.