How long did the Cedros fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 March 2018 and 5 April 2018: 10 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 2,071 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cedros (2,082 ha, 2.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2018-03-27 → 2018-04-05

Cedros fire, March 2018 Cedros

Out · last detection 5 Apr 2018, 19:09 UTC

The fire started on 27 March 2018 in Cedros, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,071 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 50th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 15 in Honduras in 2018, of 73.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cedros · 2016 Cedros · 2020 Cedros · 2020 Cedros · 2020

Burnt area: 2,071ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 27 Mar 2018 – 5 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 27 Mar; 2018
Heat detections: 87; in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 114MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Mar5 Apr

Play back 5 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Mar 28 Mar 29 Mar 31 Mar 2 Apr 4 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

34°high

49km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 9 Apr.

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 868 ha in 2016.

868 ha Cedros fire, April 2016 1,450 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Cedros where it started

2,082 ha reached on 27 Mar

2.6 %

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 Mar	31.8 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Mar	31.2 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
29 Mar	32.6 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Mar	34.0 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
31 Mar	32.9 °C	22 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Apr	30.6 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Apr	32.4 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Apr	31.1 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
4 Apr	32.0 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Apr	31.6 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
6 Apr after	32.2 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Apr after	31.8 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Apr after	34.3 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Apr after	31.0 °C	46 %	31 km/h	3.8 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Mar 2018

After · 12 Apr 2018

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 · 87Every 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 27 March 2018 and 5 April 2018: 10 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 2,071 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cedros (2,082 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.

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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 really happened?

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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. 87 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