How long did the Catatumbo fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2016 and 29 March 2016: 19 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 5,811 hectares (58.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Catatumbo (5,851 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

VE · Venezuela · 2016-03-11 → 2016-03-29

Catatumbo fire, 11 March 2016 Catatumbo

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2016, 17:47 UTC

The fire started on 11 March 2016 in Catatumbo, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,811 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 9th largest in Zulia since 2016 (of 135 with a page). Number 14 in Venezuela in 2016, of 238.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Catatumbo · 2020 Catatumbo · 2020 Catatumbo · 2020 Jesús María Semprum · 2024

Burnt area: 5,811ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 11 Mar 2016 – 29 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 11 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 280; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 114MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Mar29 Mar

Play back 29 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Mar 14 Mar 17 Mar 21 Mar 24 Mar 26 Mar 27 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

39°high

41km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.2 mm on 3 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 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

Catatumbo where it started

5,851 ha reached on 5 Mar

1.2 %

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)
5 Mar	36.0 °C	46 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Mar	36.8 °C	48 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
7 Mar	36.2 °C	49 %	30 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
8 Mar	36.1 °C	46 %	33 km/h	0.6 mm	High 22
9 Mar	34.4 °C	51 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
10 Mar	35.4 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
11 Mar	32.4 °C	52 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 17
12 Mar	34.4 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
13 Mar	35.1 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Mar	37.3 °C	42 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Mar	37.0 °C	44 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Mar	35.9 °C	58 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
17 Mar	35.6 °C	54 %	20 km/h	2.4 mm	Low 7
18 Mar	36.0 °C	55 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 16
19 Mar	37.7 °C	41 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Mar	37.7 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.5 mm	High 23
21 Mar	38.6 °C	52 %	33 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
22 Mar	34.1 °C	60 %	36 km/h	13.2 mm	Very low 3
23 Mar	36.2 °C	47 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
24 Mar	36.4 °C	50 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Mar	36.4 °C	45 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
26 Mar	36.9 °C	47 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
27 Mar	37.2 °C	46 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
28 Mar	36.9 °C	48 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
29 Mar	36.6 °C	43 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
30 Mar after	36.8 °C	42 %	33 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 21
31 Mar after	37.2 °C	49 %	27 km/h	6.8 mm	Very low 5
1 Apr after	37.4 °C	47 %	29 km/h	2.8 mm	Low 7
2 Apr after	36.7 °C	49 %	41 km/h	6.5 mm	Very low 4
3 Apr after	32.9 °C	53 %	20 km/h	9.2 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Mar 2016

After · 5 Apr 2016

Before After

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 · 280Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Catatumbo fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2016 and 29 March 2016: 19 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 5,811 hectares (58.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Catatumbo (5,851 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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

Protección Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 280 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.

Where it burned