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Wanderley fire, 27 September 2022 Wanderley

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2022, 17:09 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Wanderley, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 312th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 394 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

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Burnt area
4,160ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
27 Sept 2022 – 15 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Sept
2022
Heat detections
243
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
158MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept15 Oct
15 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2022 · 30 MW · 4 28 Sept 2022 · 990 MW · 22 29 Sept 2022 · 206 MW · 28 30 Sept 2022 · 109 MW · 31 1 Oct 2022 · 87 MW · 10 2 Oct 2022 · 66 MW · 5 3 Oct 2022 · 29 MW · 5 4 Oct 2022 · 9 MW · 2 5 Oct 2022 · 87 MW · 16 6 Oct 2022 · 515 MW · 45 7 Oct 2022 · 145 MW · 9 8 Oct 2022 · 49 MW · 10 9 Oct 2022 · 266 MW · 21 10 Oct 2022 · 16 MW · 7 11 Oct 2022 · 43 MW · 8 12 Oct 2022 · 58 MW · 6 13 Oct 2022 · 238 MW · 4 14 Oct 2022 · 56 MW · 9 15 Oct 2022 · 10 MW · 1
27 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
41km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.1 mm on 24 Oct.

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 2.6% of the area of London (42 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. Wanderley 12,968 inhabitants where it started
    4,183 ha reached on 27 Sept
    1.4 %

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 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)
22 Sept 37.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept 38.3 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept 36.3 °C 32 % 41 km/h 7.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Sept 34.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 7.1 mm Low 10
26 Sept 35.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Sept 36.6 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Sept 36.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Sept 38.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Sept 37.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 37.3 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Oct 36.6 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Oct 37.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Oct 38.2 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Oct 39.5 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Oct 39.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Oct 38.9 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Oct 39.5 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Oct 39.3 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Oct 36.9 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Oct 38.0 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Oct 36.3 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Oct 36.9 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct 38.1 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Oct 37.2 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Oct after 36.9 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Oct after 36.7 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Oct after 37.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct after 37.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Oct after 37.8 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Oct after 38.2 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Oct after 37.9 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Oct after 36.8 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
24 Oct after 33.7 °C 40 % 32 km/h 9.1 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2022
After · 22 Oct 2022

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 8 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1045 µg/m³
Optical depth0.62
25262728293012345678910111213141516
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 · 243Every 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 Wanderley fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2022 to 15 October 2022 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2022 to 13 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,160 hectares (41.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Wanderley (4,183 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 13 October 2022 → 15 October 2022.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 September 2022 to 13 October 2022. 243 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 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.