How long did the Jacaltenango fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 April 2026 to 29 April 2026 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 April 2026 to 29 April 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,009 hectares (40.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jacaltenango (3,556 ha, 22 %); San Miguel Acatán (476 ha, 3.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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.

GT · Guatemala · 2026-04-23 → 2026-04-29

Jacaltenango fire, April 2026 Jacaltenango, San Miguel Acatán

Out · last detection 29 Apr 2026, 19:00 UTC

The fire started on 23 April 2026 in Jacaltenango, Guatemala, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,009 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Huehuetenango since 2016 (of 17 with a page). The largest in Guatemala in 2026, of 20.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jacaltenango · 2017 Jacaltenango · 2019 Jacaltenango · 2019 San Juan Ixcoy · 2024

Burnt area: 4,009ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 23 Apr 2026 – 29 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 23 Apr; 2026
Heat detections: 101; in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 99MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Apr29 Apr

Play back 29 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Apr 24 Apr 25 Apr 26 Apr 27 Apr 28 Apr 29 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

34°high

50km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 2 May.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,447 ha in 2017, 2,290 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,583 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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

Jacaltenango where it started

3,556 ha reached on 23 Apr

22 %
San Miguel Acatán

476 ha reached on 27 Apr

3.7 %

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 area7.2 ha

Residents≈ 2,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.2 hectares of built-up land and about 2,000 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)
23 Apr	30.2 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
24 Apr	30.1 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
25 Apr	32.4 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	High 27
26 Apr	33.1 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Apr	33.7 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Apr	32.5 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Apr	32.2 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Apr after	32.3 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
1 May after	31.2 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 May after	31.2 °C	34 %	40 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Apr 2026

After · 6 May 2026

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 27 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM1058 µg/m³

Optical depth0.64

WHO 15

2122232425262728293012

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 · 101Every 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 Guatemala ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jacaltenango fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 April 2026 to 29 April 2026 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 April 2026 to 29 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,009 hectares (40.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jacaltenango (3,556 ha, 22 %); San Miguel Acatán (476 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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.

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 ›

CONRED ↗
INAB · Instituto Nacional de Bosques ↗

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 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 122 · 123 · 1566.

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 24 April 2026 to 29 April 2026. 101 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 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.

Where it burned