How long did the Cedros fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2018 and 25 April 2018: 8 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 1,518 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cedros (1,527 ha, 1.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 2018-04-18 → 2018-04-25

Cedros fire, 18 April 2018 Cedros

Out · last detection 26 Apr 2018, 19:16 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2018 in Cedros, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,518 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 81th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 31 in Honduras in 2018, of 73.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 1,518ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 18 Apr 2018 – 25 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 18 Apr; 2018
Heat detections: 56; in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 104MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr25 Apr

Play back 26 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 19 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr 22 Apr 23 Apr 26 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

35°high

40km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.4 mm on 27 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 1% of the area of London (15 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

1,527 ha reached on 18 Apr

1.9 %

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)
18 Apr	31.5 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Apr	31.4 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Apr	31.7 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
21 Apr	31.9 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
22 Apr	33.8 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
23 Apr	34.8 °C	22 %	37 km/h	1.1 mm	High 28
24 Apr	33.6 °C	29 %	34 km/h	1.1 mm	High 23
25 Apr	34.3 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Apr after	33.3 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Apr after	30.5 °C	37 %	31 km/h	11.4 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Apr 2018

After · 2 May 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 · 56Every 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 18 April 2018 and 25 April 2018: 8 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 1,518 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cedros (1,527 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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

ICF · Instituto de Conservación Forestal ↗
COPECO ↗

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.

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 56 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