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VE · Venezuela · →

Muñoz fire, 1 March 2024 Muñoz

Out · last detection 5 Mar 2024, 18:49 UTC

The fire started on 1 March 2024 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,120 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 240th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 114 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.

Burnt area
3,120ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
1 Mar 2024 – 5 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Mar
2024
Heat detections
70
in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Mar 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Mar5 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

12345

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
40km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 658 ha in 2018, 462 ha in 2019, 1,732 ha in 2020, 2,197 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,485 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Muñoz 27,542 inhabitants where it started
    3,140 ha reached on 29 Feb
    0.4 %

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)
29 Feb 35.7 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Mar 36.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Mar 35.2 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Mar 36.1 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Mar 36.7 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Mar 37.0 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Mar after 36.0 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Mar after 36.7 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Mar after 36.8 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
9 Mar after 38.3 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Mar after 35.9 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Mar after 37.6 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Mar after 37.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Mar after 37.3 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Mar after 37.6 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Mar after 38.1 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Mar after 37.4 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Mar after 37.7 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Feb 2024
After · 12 Mar 2024

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 4 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 74 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak74 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10108 µg/m³
Optical depth0.95
282912345678
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 · 70Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Muñoz fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 March 2024 and 5 March 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 3,120 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Muñoz (3,140 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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
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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.

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.