Villeta fire, January 2022 Villeta, Nueva Italia
The fire started on 29 January 2022 in Villeta, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,989 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 13th largest in CENTRAL since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 113 in Paraguay in 2022, of 185.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,989ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 29 Jan 2022 – 3 Feb 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 29 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 115
- in a single hotspot: 158 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 245MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.7 mm on 5 Feb.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11 ha in 2016, 946 ha in 2017, 267 ha in 2018, 1,574 ha in 2019, 2,638 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,765 ha that had burned before.
- 1,344 ha Villeta fire, September 2019 1,552 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 946 ha Villeta fire, July 2017 2,073 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 508 ha Villeta fire, February 2020 1,558 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Villeta where it started1,961 ha reached on 24 Jan2.2 %
-
35 ha0.1 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jan | 33.7 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 30 Jan | 35.7 °C | 26 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 31 Jan | 37.4 °C | 22 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Feb | 38.9 °C | 22 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Feb | 37.7 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Feb | 36.0 °C | 44 % | 37 km/h | 8.4 mm | Low 7 |
| 4 Feb after | 34.4 °C | 54 % | 34 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 5 Feb after | 30.6 °C | 50 % | 34 km/h | 23.7 mm | Very low 1 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 115Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,713 haVilleta19 August 2020 · 18 days · 13 km away
- 5,675 haPilcomayo24 August 2020 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 4,978 haVilleta14 February 2022 · 7 days · 24 km away
- 13,543 haVilletaMarch 2020 · 8 days · 27 km away
- 5,616 haPilcomayo8 January 2022 · 13 days · 29 km away
- 22,209 haVilleta20 August 2020 · 13 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Villeta fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 January 2022 and 3 February 2022: 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 1,989 hectares (19.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Villeta (1,961 ha, 2.2 %); Nueva Italia (35 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
- 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.
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.
No changes 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
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. 115 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.
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.