How long did the Marale fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 May 2024 to 23 May 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 May 2024 to 20 May 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,508 hectares (15.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Marale (1,517 ha, 3.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 · 2024-05-12 → 2024-05-23

Marale fire, May 2024 Marale

Out · last detection 23 May 2024, 19:10 UTC

The fire started on 12 May 2024 in Marale, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,508 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 83th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 36 in Honduras in 2024, of 94.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orica · 2020 Marale · 2023 San Ignacio · 2024 San Ignacio · 2018

Burnt area: 1,508ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 12 May 2024 – 23 May 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 12 May; 2024
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 48MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

12 May 13 May 14 May 16 May 18 May 20 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

37°high

38km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 29 May.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 743 ha in 2020, 1 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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

Marale where it started

1,517 ha reached on 12 May

3.8 %

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 area0.75 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.75 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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)
12 May	36.3 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 May	35.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 May	35.8 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 May	35.8 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 May	34.7 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 May	34.3 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
18 May	37.2 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
19 May	35.6 °C	25 %	32 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 21
20 May	35.0 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
21 May	34.8 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
22 May	33.5 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 31
23 May	34.4 °C	31 %	29 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
24 May after	36.4 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 May after	36.0 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
26 May after	35.9 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 May after	36.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
28 May after	34.4 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
29 May after	33.7 °C	34 %	35 km/h	1.0 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 May 2024

After · 30 May 2024

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 21 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 67 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak67 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM1099 µg/m³

Optical depth1.73

WHO 15

1011121314151617181920212223

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 · 74Every 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 Marale fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 May 2024 to 23 May 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 May 2024 to 20 May 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,508 hectares (15.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Marale (1,517 ha, 3.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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 12 May 2024 to 20 May 2024. 74 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