Skip to content
worldfires
en
HN · Honduras · →

Catacamas fire, 28 March 2016 Catacamas

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2016, 07:24 UTC

The fire started on 28 March 2016 in Catacamas, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,504 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Olancho since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 2 in Honduras in 2016, of 51.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Catacamas · 2018Catacamas · 2020Juticalpa · 2019Juticalpa · 2020

Burnt area
5,504ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
28 Mar 2016 – 16 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Mar
2016
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
67MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Mar16 Apr
17 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

28 Mar 2016 · 2 MW · 1 29 Mar 2016 · 9 MW · 3 1 Apr 2016 · 13 MW · 1 2 Apr 2016 · 34 MW · 15 3 Apr 2016 · 9 MW · 2 4 Apr 2016 · 288 MW · 41 5 Apr 2016 · 320 MW · 55 6 Apr 2016 · 103 MW · 41 7 Apr 2016 · 43 MW · 18 8 Apr 2016 · 94 MW · 20 9 Apr 2016 · 3 MW · 3 10 Apr 2016 · 17 MW · 3 11 Apr 2016 · 28 MW · 3 12 Apr 2016 · 136 MW · 5 13 Apr 2016 · 114 MW · 5 14 Apr 2016 · 1 MW · 1 15 Apr 2016 · 22 MW · 2 16 Apr 2016 · 26 MW · 4 17 Apr 2016 · 7 MW · 4
28 Mar 2 Apr 5 Apr 8 Apr 11 Apr 14 Apr 17 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
49km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 26 Apr.

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 3.5% of the area of London (55 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. Catacamas where it started
    5,536 ha reached on 28 Mar
    0.8 %

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)
28 Mar 32.7 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
29 Mar 32.6 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
30 Mar 32.0 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
31 Mar 32.1 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
1 Apr 35.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Apr 37.3 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
3 Apr 34.7 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 20
4 Apr 33.1 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
5 Apr 32.9 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Apr 33.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Apr 33.1 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Apr 35.0 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Apr 33.1 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Apr 31.5 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Apr 32.3 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 17
12 Apr 33.9 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
13 Apr 34.2 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
14 Apr 34.1 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
15 Apr 34.8 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Apr 34.8 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Apr after 35.1 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Apr after 33.1 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Apr after 31.6 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Apr after 34.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Apr after 35.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Apr after 35.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Apr after 36.1 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Apr after 33.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
25 Apr after 36.3 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
26 Apr after 36.0 °C 36 % 39 km/h 3.3 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Mar 2016
After · 23 Apr 2016

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 · 227Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Catacamas fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 March 2016 to 16 April 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 April 2016 to 9 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,504 hectares (55.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Catacamas (5,536 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Honduras (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: 9 April 2016 → 16 April 2016.
  2. Start date: 2 April 2016 → 28 March 2016.

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 2 April 2016 to 9 April 2016. 227 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 (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.