How long did the Lepaterique fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 March 2020 to 10 April 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 March 2020 to 3 April 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,592 hectares (25.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lamaní (1,322 ha, 4.3 %); Lepaterique (1,285 ha, 2.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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 · 2020-03-24 → 2020-04-10

Lepaterique fire, March 2020 Lamaní, Lepaterique

Out · last detection 11 Apr 2020, 18:50 UTC

The fire started on 24 March 2020 in Lepaterique, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,592 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 38th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 46 in Honduras in 2020, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lamaní · 2018 Aguanqueterique · 2019 Distrito Central · 2019 Guajiquiro · 2022

Burnt area: 2,592ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 24 Mar 2020 – 10 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 24 Mar; 2020
Heat detections: 182; in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 218MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Mar10 Apr

Play back 11 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

24 Mar 28 Mar 31 Mar 3 Apr 8 Apr 11 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

37°high

48km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 381 ha in 2018.

381 ha Lamaní fire, April 2018 1,190 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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

Lamaní

1,322 ha reached on 28 Mar

4.3 %
Lepaterique where it started

1,285 ha reached on 24 Mar

2.3 %

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 2020

Built-up area2.5 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
24 Mar	31.3 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Mar	32.4 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Mar	31.6 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Mar	33.0 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Mar	33.6 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Mar	32.6 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Mar	31.8 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
31 Mar	32.7 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Apr	31.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
2 Apr	33.8 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Apr	32.2 °C	36 %	28 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 17
4 Apr	33.1 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.7 mm	High 23
5 Apr	34.0 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Apr	34.5 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Apr	33.5 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Apr	34.0 °C	24 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Apr	34.7 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Apr	36.7 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Apr after	34.3 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Apr after	33.4 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
13 Apr after	33.3 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Apr after	34.5 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
15 Apr after	34.5 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 38
16 Apr after	34.2 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Apr after	32.5 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Apr after	34.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Apr after	33.5 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Apr after	32.7 °C	35 %	42 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 · 17 Mar 2020

After · 17 Apr 2020

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.

Detections table · 182Every 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 Lepaterique fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 March 2020 to 10 April 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 March 2020 to 3 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,592 hectares (25.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lamaní (1,322 ha, 4.3 %); Lepaterique (1,285 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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 Last day with fire: 3 April 2020 → 10 April 2020.

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 24 March 2020 to 3 April 2020. 182 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 2020, 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