Muñoz fire, 22 February 2024 Muñoz
The fire started on 22 February 2024 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,540 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 107th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 60 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Muñoz · 2019Muñoz · 2020Muñoz · 2020Muñoz · 2022
- Burnt area
- 4,540ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 22 Feb 2024 – 26 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 22 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 130
- in a single hotspot: 120 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 213MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 157 ha in 2016, 249 ha in 2018, 1,589 ha in 2019, 1,891 ha in 2020, 1,005 ha in 2022, 345 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,058 ha that had burned before.
- 1,257 ha Muñoz fire, February 2019 1,567 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,186 ha Muñoz fire, February 2020 1,554 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 657 ha Muñoz fire, March 2020 2,483 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 614 ha Muñoz fire, March 2022 1,561 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 345 ha Muñoz fire, March 2023 1,671 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 47 ha Muñoz fire, March 2020 3,262 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9 ha Muñoz fire, March 2018 2,101 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
4,567 ha reached on 20 Feb0.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Feb | 37.2 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Feb | 36.5 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 22 Feb | 37.0 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Feb | 36.6 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 24 Feb | 36.7 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Feb | 36.9 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 26 Feb | 34.7 °C | 44 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 27 Feb after | 35.3 °C | 38 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Feb after | 36.2 °C | 31 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 29 Feb after | 36.5 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Mar after | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 2 Mar after | 35.7 °C | 30 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Mar after | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 4 Mar after | 37.4 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 5 Mar after | 37.9 °C | 32 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 6 Mar after | 36.5 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Mar after | 38.4 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 25 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 130Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Muñoz fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 February 2024 and 26 February 2024: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,540 hectares (45.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Muñoz (4,567 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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
Satellite cross-check
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 130 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.
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.