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Catatumbo fire, 13 March 2020 Catatumbo

Out · last detection 10 Apr 2020, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2020 in Catatumbo, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Zulia since 2016 (of 135 with a page). The largest in Venezuela in 2020, of 400.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jesús María Semprum · 2016Catatumbo · 2016Catatumbo · 2020Catatumbo · 2020

Burnt area
27,868ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
13 Mar 2020 – 11 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Mar
2020
Heat detections
2,089
in a single hotspot: 199 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
770MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar11 Apr
10 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 2020 · 70 MW · 7 15 Mar 2020 · 156 MW · 14 16 Mar 2020 · 400 MW · 35 17 Mar 2020 · 1,130 MW · 49 18 Mar 2020 · 41 MW · 15 19 Mar 2020 · 1,422 MW · 91 20 Mar 2020 · 2,603 MW · 237 21 Mar 2020 · 1,499 MW · 114 22 Mar 2020 · 910 MW · 126 23 Mar 2020 · 452 MW · 41 24 Mar 2020 · 930 MW · 143 25 Mar 2020 · 336 MW · 31 26 Mar 2020 · 713 MW · 86 27 Mar 2020 · 593 MW · 47 28 Mar 2020 · 1,859 MW · 210 29 Mar 2020 · 772 MW · 100 30 Mar 2020 · 681 MW · 119 31 Mar 2020 · 1,065 MW · 159 1 Apr 2020 · 1,459 MW · 204 2 Apr 2020 · 826 MW · 136 3 Apr 2020 · 45 MW · 21 4 Apr 2020 · 325 MW · 74 7 Apr 2020 · 120 MW · 8 10 Apr 2020 · 64 MW · 22
13 Mar 18 Mar 20 Mar 22 Mar 26 Mar 30 Mar 3 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

36°high
41km/h · peak gust
42%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 21 Apr.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 925 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (279 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. Catatumbo where it started
    28,083 ha reached on 13 Mar
    5.8 %

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.

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)
13 Mar 33.6 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Mar 32.8 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
15 Mar 32.6 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
16 Mar 33.8 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
17 Mar 32.4 °C 50 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
18 Mar 32.2 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Mar 32.7 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Mar 32.1 °C 51 % 35 km/h 3.2 mm Low 8
21 Mar 33.0 °C 46 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Mar 32.9 °C 53 % 27 km/h 2.0 mm Low 10
23 Mar 33.3 °C 55 % 28 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 14
24 Mar 34.2 °C 58 % 25 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
25 Mar 33.0 °C 58 % 21 km/h 1.5 mm Low 9
26 Mar 34.8 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
27 Mar 35.0 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Mar 32.9 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Mar 33.2 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
30 Mar 33.5 °C 52 % 31 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16
31 Mar 33.2 °C 53 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
1 Apr 35.0 °C 50 % 41 km/h 6.1 mm Low 7
2 Apr 34.7 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 13
3 Apr 34.8 °C 52 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
4 Apr 35.3 °C 56 % 30 km/h 2.7 mm Low 7
5 Apr 35.6 °C 54 % 25 km/h 6.2 mm Very low 4
6 Apr 33.2 °C 63 % 23 km/h 6.5 mm Very low 1
7 Apr 34.6 °C 56 % 26 km/h 7.8 mm Very low 1
8 Apr 34.3 °C 62 % 22 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 1
9 Apr 35.2 °C 55 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 4
10 Apr 36.1 °C 52 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm Low 7
11 Apr 35.4 °C 55 % 23 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 2
12 Apr after 34.8 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.4 mm Low 8
13 Apr after 34.5 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
14 Apr after 34.9 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
15 Apr after 34.3 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
16 Apr after 33.2 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
17 Apr after 33.2 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
18 Apr after 33.0 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm Low 8
19 Apr after 35.4 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.8 mm Low 10
20 Apr after 36.9 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 15
21 Apr after 34.0 °C 55 % 24 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2020
After · 18 Apr 2020

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 · 2,089Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Catatumbo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2020 to 11 April 2020 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 March 2020 to 4 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,868 hectares (278.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Catatumbo (28,083 ha, 5.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % 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 · 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: 4 April 2020 → 11 April 2020.

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 13 March 2020 to 4 April 2020. 2,089 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 (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.