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Guaimaca fire, March 2023 Guaimaca

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2023, 19:37 UTC

The fire started on 31 March 2023 in Guaimaca, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,377 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 99th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 76 in Honduras in 2023, of 149.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guaimaca · 2019Cedros · 2020Guayape · 2020Cedros · 2020

Burnt area
1,377ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
31 Mar 2023 – 7 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Mar
2023
Heat detections
63
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
88MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Mar7 Apr
7 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Apr 2023 · 88 MW · 16 2 Apr 2023 · 374 MW · 26 3 Apr 2023 · 16 MW · 3 4 Apr 2023 · 47 MW · 3 5 Apr 2023 · 17 MW · 5 6 Apr 2023 · 36 MW · 3 7 Apr 2023 · 39 MW · 7
1 Apr 2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 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

33°high
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 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

  1. Guaimaca where it started
    1,386 ha reached on 1 Apr
    1.8 %

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)
1 Apr 30.4 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Apr 31.6 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Apr 31.8 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
4 Apr 31.9 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Apr 32.9 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Apr 32.2 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
7 Apr 32.8 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Apr after 32.3 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
9 Apr after 31.6 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
10 Apr after 32.6 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
11 Apr after 33.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Apr after 34.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Apr after 32.7 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Apr after 32.8 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr after 34.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Apr after 35.0 °C 23 % 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 · 24 Mar 2023
After · 14 Apr 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 7 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1062 µg/m³
Optical depth0.79
3031123456789
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 · 63Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guaimaca fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 March 2023 to 7 April 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2023 to 6 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,377 hectares (13.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guaimaca (1,386 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 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 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 6 April 2023 → 7 April 2023.
  2. Start date: 1 April 2023 → 31 March 2023.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 April 2023 to 6 April 2023. 63 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.