How long did the El Copey fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 February 2020 to 13 March 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 February 2020 to 6 March 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,415 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: El Copey (2,406 ha, 2.5 %); Valledupar (24 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CO · Colombia · 2020-02-22 → 2020-03-13

El Copey fire, February 2020 El Copey, Valledupar

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2020, 18:11 UTC

The fire started on 22 February 2020 in El Copey, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,415 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 26th largest in Cesar since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 69 in Colombia in 2020, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Valledupar · 2016 El Copey · 2019 El Copey · 2016 El Copey · 2020

Burnt area: 2,415ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 22 Feb 2020 – 13 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 22 Feb; 2020
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 97MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Feb13 Mar

Play back 12 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Feb 1 Mar 3 Mar 4 Mar 5 Mar 9 Mar 12 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

36°high

40km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,687 ha in 2016, 76 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

El Copey where it started

2,406 ha reached on 24 Feb

2.5 %
Valledupar

24 ha

0.0 %

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)
22 Feb	31.3 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
23 Feb	32.4 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
24 Feb	33.8 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Feb	34.1 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
26 Feb	33.0 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Feb	29.9 °C	50 %	27 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
28 Feb	33.5 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Feb	33.4 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Mar	33.7 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Mar	33.6 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Mar	35.3 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Mar	34.4 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Mar	35.4 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Mar	35.7 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Mar	32.8 °C	33 %	28 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 19
8 Mar	33.4 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Mar	33.7 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Mar	33.6 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.5 mm	High 30
11 Mar	31.5 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Mar	32.3 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Mar	32.7 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Mar after	32.7 °C	29 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Mar after	33.8 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Mar after	34.1 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Mar after	32.9 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Mar after	32.9 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Mar after	33.8 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Mar after	32.7 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
21 Mar after	33.7 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Mar after	33.1 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Mar after	33.4 °C	27 %	31 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 · 15 Feb 2020

After · 20 Mar 2020

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 · 111Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the El Copey fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 February 2020 to 13 March 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 February 2020 to 6 March 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,415 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: El Copey (2,406 ha, 2.5 %); Valledupar (24 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

UNGRD · Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres ↗
IDEAM ↗

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

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 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 123 · 119.

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 28 February 2020 to 6 March 2020. 111 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 (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