How long did the Cedros fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2017 and 26 March 2017: 6 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 2,160 hectares (21.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Talanga (1,096 ha, 2.5 %); Cedros (1,076 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % 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.

HN · Honduras · 2017-03-21 → 2017-03-26

Cedros fire, 21 March 2017 Talanga, Cedros

Out · last detection 26 Mar 2017, 19:41 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2017 in Cedros, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 45th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 7 in Honduras in 2017, of 30.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cedros · 2020 Cedros · 2020 Cedros · 2020 Guaimaca · 2023

Burnt area: 2,160ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 21 Mar 2017 – 26 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 21 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 71; in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 130MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar26 Mar

Play back 26 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 26 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

32°high

49km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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

Talanga

1,096 ha reached on 21 Mar

2.5 %
Cedros where it started

1,076 ha reached on 21 Mar

1.4 %

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)
21 Mar	30.2 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
22 Mar	30.1 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Mar	30.0 °C	30 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 Mar	31.6 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Mar	31.4 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Mar	31.2 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
27 Mar after	33.5 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Mar after	35.0 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Mar after	32.3 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
30 Mar after	34.5 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Mar after	35.5 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Apr after	35.2 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Apr after	34.7 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 Apr after	35.3 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
4 Apr after	33.4 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Apr after	35.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Mar 2017

After · 2 Apr 2017

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 · 71Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cedros fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2017 and 26 March 2017: 6 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 2,160 hectares (21.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Talanga (1,096 ha, 2.5 %); Cedros (1,076 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % 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 ›

ICF · Instituto de Conservación Forestal ↗
COPECO ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 71 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.

Where it burned