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Bagaces fire, 27 February 2022 Bagaces

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2022, 18:50 UTC

The fire started on 27 February 2022 in Bagaces, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,615 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 5 in Costa Rica in 2022, of 15.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bagaces · 2026Carrillo · 2022Carrillo · 2026Carrillo · 2020

Burnt area
2,615ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
27 Feb 2022 – 16 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
cantons
Started on
27 Feb
2022
Heat detections
145
in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Feb16 Mar
16 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Feb 2022 · 2 MW · 1 1 Mar 2022 · 1 MW · 1 2 Mar 2022 · 12 MW · 7 4 Mar 2022 · 26 MW · 4 5 Mar 2022 · 99 MW · 20 6 Mar 2022 · 95 MW · 25 7 Mar 2022 · 55 MW · 25 8 Mar 2022 · 111 MW · 19 9 Mar 2022 · 197 MW · 24 10 Mar 2022 · 16 MW · 4 11 Mar 2022 · 19 MW · 4 12 Mar 2022 · 13 MW · 4 13 Mar 2022 · 3 MW · 2 14 Mar 2022 · 24 MW · 2 15 Mar 2022 · 7 MW · 2 16 Mar 2022 · 12 MW · 1
27 Feb 4 Mar 7 Mar 9 Mar 10 Mar 13 Mar 16 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
68km/h · peak gust
39%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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 1.7% of the area of London (26 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. Bagaces where it started
    2,631 ha reached on 27 Feb
    2.0 %

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)
27 Feb 30.2 °C 49 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Feb 30.9 °C 48 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Mar 30.1 °C 53 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Mar 29.9 °C 55 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Mar 29.8 °C 56 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Mar 29.4 °C 58 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Mar 29.8 °C 56 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Mar 31.3 °C 54 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Mar 31.6 °C 53 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Mar 32.4 °C 48 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Mar 33.5 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Mar 33.6 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
11 Mar 32.6 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
12 Mar 34.0 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Mar 30.3 °C 54 % 59 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
14 Mar 31.1 °C 55 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Mar 32.3 °C 48 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Mar 32.3 °C 50 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Mar after 32.5 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Mar after 32.7 °C 51 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
19 Mar after 31.4 °C 54 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Mar after 30.2 °C 55 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Mar after 29.9 °C 58 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Mar after 32.0 °C 53 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Mar after 32.4 °C 53 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Mar after 31.9 °C 52 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Mar after 30.4 °C 52 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Mar after 31.6 °C 45 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Feb 2022
After · 23 Mar 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.

Detections table · 145Every 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 Costa Rica ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bagaces fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 February 2022 to 16 March 2022 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2022 to 12 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,615 hectares (26.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bagaces (2,631 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Costa Rica (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 March 2022 → 16 March 2022.
  2. Start date: 1 March 2022 → 27 February 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 911.

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 1 March 2022 to 12 March 2022. 145 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.

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.