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Guane fire, February 2023 Guane

Out · last detection 18 Mar 2023, 19:14 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2023 in Guane, Cuba, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,267 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Pinar del Río since 2016 (of 26 with a page). Number 6 in Cuba in 2023, of 46.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guane · 2026Guane · 2018Guane · 2024San Juan y Martínez · 2025

Burnt area
2,267ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
28 Feb 2023 – 18 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Feb
2023
Heat detections
100
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
86MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb18 Mar
18 Mar 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Mar 2023 · 22 MW · 1 2 Mar 2023 · 46 MW · 9 7 Mar 2023 · 32 MW · 3 8 Mar 2023 · 145 MW · 6 9 Mar 2023 · 48 MW · 9 11 Mar 2023 · 6 MW · 1 12 Mar 2023 · 297 MW · 17 13 Mar 2023 · 272 MW · 35 14 Mar 2023 · 63 MW · 11 17 Mar 2023 · 5 MW · 4 18 Mar 2023 · 11 MW · 4
1 Mar 7 Mar 9 Mar 12 Mar 14 Mar 18 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

29°high
61km/h · peak gust
47%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.0 mm on 19 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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. Guane where it started
    2,277 ha reached on 1 Mar
    3.2 %

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)
28 Feb 27.9 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
1 Mar 28.0 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
2 Mar 28.0 °C 55 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Mar 27.9 °C 60 % 61 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
4 Mar 28.1 °C 55 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Mar 28.3 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
6 Mar 29.4 °C 49 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
7 Mar 29.2 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
8 Mar 28.8 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
9 Mar 28.0 °C 52 % 25 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
10 Mar 27.6 °C 60 % 34 km/h 7.3 mm Very low 3
11 Mar 27.7 °C 62 % 21 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 2
12 Mar 28.5 °C 54 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
13 Mar 28.9 °C 53 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
14 Mar 27.7 °C 66 % 24 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
15 Mar 26.7 °C 67 % 39 km/h 4.0 mm Very low 3
16 Mar 27.7 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Mar 28.3 °C 55 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
18 Mar 28.2 °C 68 % 45 km/h 5.3 mm Very low 2
19 Mar after 26.1 °C 72 % 35 km/h 18.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Feb 2023
After · 25 Mar 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 9 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1034 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
56789101112131415161718192021
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 · 100Every 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 Cuba ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guane fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2023 to 18 March 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 March 2023 to 18 March 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,267 hectares (22.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guane (2,277 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cuba (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: 105 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 7 March 2023 → 28 February 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 105.

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 7 March 2023 to 18 March 2023. 100 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.