Arauca fire, 15 February 2025 Arauca
The fire started on 15 February 2025 in Arauca, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,196 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 35th largest in Arauca since 2016 (of 107 with a page). Number 12 in Colombia in 2025, of 45.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Arauca · 2024Arauca · 2019Arauca · 2020Arauca · 2024
- Burnt area
- 3,196ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 25days
- 15 Feb 2025 – 11 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 15 Feb
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 178
- in a single hotspot: 94 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 159MW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 15 Mar.
This area had burned before
76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,182 ha in 2019, 701 ha in 2020, 1,728 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,426 ha that had burned before.
- 1,728 ha Arauca fire, April 2024 2,107 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,182 ha Arauca fire, March 2019 2,280 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 701 ha Arauca fire, April 2020 1,937 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
-
Arauca where it started3,217 ha reached on 16 Feb0.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Feb | 34.1 °C | 34 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 16 Feb | 32.6 °C | 43 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Feb | 32.4 °C | 47 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 18 Feb | 33.3 °C | 47 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Feb | 32.7 °C | 50 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 20 Feb | 31.7 °C | 54 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 21 Feb | 33.9 °C | 45 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 22 Feb | 31.0 °C | 57 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 23 Feb | 32.4 °C | 48 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 24 Feb | 34.3 °C | 43 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 25 Feb | 32.8 °C | 52 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 26 Feb | 35.9 °C | 39 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 27 Feb | 36.5 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Feb | 35.7 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 1 Mar | 35.0 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Mar | 34.6 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Mar | 36.3 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Mar | 35.0 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Mar | 36.1 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Mar | 32.3 °C | 51 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Mar | 34.9 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 8 Mar | 35.7 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Mar | 35.5 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 10 Mar | 35.4 °C | 35 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 11 Mar | 34.8 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Mar after | 34.5 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Mar after | 35.3 °C | 42 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Mar after | 33.7 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 15 Mar after | 32.2 °C | 58 % | 28 km/h | 2.7 mm | Low 7 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 28 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 178Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Arauca fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 February 2025 to 11 March 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 February 2025 to 4 March 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,196 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Arauca (3,217 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119
Satellite cross-check
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 February 2025 to 4 March 2025. 178 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 International (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.