How long did the Gualaco fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 April 2023 to 12 May 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 May 2023 to 12 May 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,890 hectares (38.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gualaco (3,914 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 2023-04-25 → 2023-05-12

Gualaco fire, 25 April 2023 Gualaco

Out · last detection 12 May 2023, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 25 April 2023 in Gualaco, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,890 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Olancho since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 11 in Honduras in 2023, of 149.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gualaco · 2020 San Esteban · 2026 Gualaco · 2023 San Esteban · 2023

Burnt area: 3,890ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 25 Apr 2023 – 12 May 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 25 Apr; 2023
Heat detections: 226; in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 96MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Apr12 May

Play back 12 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

25 Apr 30 Apr 4 May 5 May 7 May 10 May

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

46km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 13 May.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,154 ha in 2020.

1,154 ha Gualaco fire, March 2020 19,730 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (39 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

Gualaco where it started

3,914 ha reached on 25 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area1.1 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
25 Apr	32.7 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Apr	33.2 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
27 Apr	33.5 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Apr	33.2 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Apr	34.1 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
30 Apr	29.6 °C	49 %	35 km/h	5.9 mm	Low 5
1 May	29.7 °C	47 %	28 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 6
2 May	33.2 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
3 May	31.0 °C	45 %	27 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 15
4 May	32.7 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 May	31.6 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 May	32.2 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 May	32.3 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 May	30.6 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
9 May	33.0 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 May	33.0 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 May	32.7 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.9 mm	High 22
12 May	31.7 °C	43 %	33 km/h	26.6 mm	Very low 3
13 May after	30.1 °C	42 %	32 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Apr 2023

After · 19 May 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 30 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 63: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM10139 µg/m³

Optical depth1.89

WHO 15

30123456789101112131415

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 · 226Every 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 Gualaco fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 April 2023 to 12 May 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 May 2023 to 12 May 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,890 hectares (38.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gualaco (3,914 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 2 May 2023 → 25 April 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 May 2023 to 12 May 2023. 226 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.

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