Burned area
satellite only1,013ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
GT · Guatemala · –
Chiquimulilla fire, February 2023 Chiquimulilla, Guazacapán
Out · last detection 20 Feb 2023, 18:59 UTC
The fire started on 19 February 2023 in Chiquimulilla, Guatemala, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,013 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
Number 25 in Guatemala in 2023, of 26.
The power measured by the satellite is low (15.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
19 Feb 2023 to 20 Feb 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 20 Feb 2023, 18:59 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only19 Feb 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only24
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 15 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only121MW
Total radiative power on 19 February 2023; hotspots that day: 20.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model25.3FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 36.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model32.8°C · 44% RH
High of 32.8 °C and minimum humidity of 44% on 20 February 2023; gusts of 31 km/h on 20 February 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 19 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 150people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 1.4 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,013 ha
- Dates
- 19 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
- Name
- Chiquimulilla
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/chiquimulilla-2023-02?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire chiquimulilla-2023-02.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-02-19 | 20 | 121 | 32.1 | 25.8 | 45 | 14.5 | 29.2 | 0 | 25.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-02-20 | 4 | 61 | 32.8 | 24.2 | 44 | 15.9 | 30.6 | 0 | 23.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-02-21 | 0 | 0 | 31.7 | 24.6 | 45 | 16.1 | 30.2 | 0 | 32.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-22 | 0 | 0 | 30.3 | 24.9 | 59 | 9.8 | 21.6 | 0.1 | 26.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-23 | 0 | 0 | 29.9 | 23.6 | 53 | 15.5 | 31 | 0.1 | 30.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-24 | 0 | 0 | 30.7 | 22.2 | 52 | 16.5 | 31.7 | 0 | 30.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-25 | 0 | 0 | 31.1 | 23.4 | 54 | 17.8 | 32.8 | 0 | 32.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-26 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 23.3 | 53 | 19.8 | 37.1 | 0.1 | 35 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-27 | 0 | 0 | 30.5 | 23.3 | 50 | 12.8 | 26.3 | 0 | 27.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-02-28 | 0 | 0 | 30.6 | 23.7 | 60 | 15.3 | 29.9 | 0 | 27 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-03-01 | 0 | 0 | 30.5 | 23.9 | 61 | 15.3 | 29.2 | 0 | 28.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2023-03-02 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 24.2 | 56 | 12.8 | 26.6 | 0 | 26.9 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,013ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 19 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 24
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 90MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
19 Feb20 Feb
20 Feb 2023
How it evolved, day by day
19 Feb
20 Feb
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
33°high
31km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity
It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 831 ha in 2017.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Chiquimulilla where it started842 ha reached on 19 Feb1.4 %
-
177 ha reached on 19 Feb1.6 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 150
Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Feb | 32.1 °C | 45 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 20 Feb | 32.8 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Feb after | 31.7 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Feb after | 30.3 °C | 59 % | 22 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Feb after | 29.9 °C | 53 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Feb after | 30.7 °C | 52 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 25 Feb after | 31.1 °C | 54 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Feb after | 30.8 °C | 53 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Feb after | 30.5 °C | 50 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Feb after | 30.6 °C | 60 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Mar after | 30.5 °C | 61 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Mar after | 30.8 °C | 56 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 25.3, a minimum humidity of 45% and 36 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.
FWI at the start
25.3
Minimum humidity
45 %
Days without rain
36
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Chiquimulilla fire, February 2023
1,013 ha
2 days
FWI 25.3
Min. humidity 45 %
Yepocapa fire, February 2016
2,578 ha
3 days
FWI 28.4
Min. humidity 46 %
86 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.3 mm on 3 Mar.
Taxisco fire, April 2021
1,699 ha
2 days
FWI 22.0
Min. humidity 45 %
22 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.0 mm on 4 Apr.
Cobán fire, April 2020
1,057 ha
15 days
FWI 24.4
Min. humidity 46 %
186 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.7 mm on 14 May.
Taxisco fire, March 2020
1,053 ha
2 days
FWI 28.6
Min. humidity 43 %
19 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.9 mm on 14 Mar.
La Libertad fire, March 2019
1,252 ha
8 days
FWI 28.9
Min. humidity 42 %
132 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.7 mm on 5 Apr.
What happened to them
- 7 days
- median duration
- 1,190 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.9 mm
- rain at the end (median; 14 of 16 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (1,013 ha against a median of 1,190 ha) and lasted 2 days, against 7 days.
In 2 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.9 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
31km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 20 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 16, with a median of 1.9 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 12 Feb 2023
After · 27 Feb 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 22 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1061 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
WHO 15
17 Feb19 Feb21 Feb23 Feb
Good
Fair
Moderate
Poor
Very poor
Extremely poor
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 24Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chiquimulilla fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 February 2023 and 20 February 2023: 2 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 1,013 hectares (10.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chiquimulilla (842 ha, 1.4 %); Guazacapán (177 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guatemala (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 7 days and their median area 1,190 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 2 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.9 mm.
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: 122 · 123 · 1566 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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. 24 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.