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Jocón fire, April 2016 Jocón, Yoro

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2016, 18:39 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2016 in Jocón, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,149 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Yoro since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 36 in Honduras in 2016, of 51.

Compare with…
Burnt area
1,149ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
1 Apr 2016 – 22 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
1 Apr
2016
Heat detections
38
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
38MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr22 Apr
22 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

1 Apr 2016 · 20 MW · 2 2 Apr 2016 · 64 MW · 2 4 Apr 2016 · 10 MW · 1 7 Apr 2016 · 6 MW · 1 8 Apr 2016 · 17 MW · 3 9 Apr 2016 · 19 MW · 6 10 Apr 2016 · 113 MW · 4 11 Apr 2016 · 26 MW · 2 13 Apr 2016 · 106 MW · 7 14 Apr 2016 · 13 MW · 4 16 Apr 2016 · 19 MW · 2 19 Apr 2016 · 85 MW · 3 22 Apr 2016 · 3 MW · 1
1 Apr 4 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 13 Apr 16 Apr 22 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

32°high
44km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 20 Apr.

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 0.7% of the area of London (11 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. Jocón where it started
    783 ha reached on 2 Apr
    2.2 %
  2. 372 ha reached on 1 Apr
    0.2 %

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)
7 Apr 29.3 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
8 Apr 28.0 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 Apr 28.2 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
10 Apr 28.7 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
11 Apr 30.0 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Apr 28.5 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
13 Apr 32.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Apr 30.4 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
15 Apr 31.1 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Apr 31.7 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Apr 32.4 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
18 Apr 28.9 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
19 Apr 28.1 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 15
20 Apr 26.9 °C 52 % 31 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Mar 2016
After · 29 Apr 2016

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 · 38Every 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 Jocón fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 April 2016 to 22 April 2016 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 April 2016 to 15 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,149 hectares (11.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jocón (783 ha, 2.2 %); Yoro (372 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 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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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 April 2016 to 15 April 2016. 38 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.