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VE · Venezuela · →

Muñoz fire, March 2025 Muñoz

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2025, 18:30 UTC

The fire started on 7 March 2025 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,697 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 711th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 103 in Venezuela in 2025, of 139.

Burnt area
1,697ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
7 Mar 2025 – 9 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Mar
2025
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
431MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Mar 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Mar9 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

789

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
36km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.2 mm on 15 Mar.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 596 ha in 2020, 178 ha in 2022, 139 ha in 2023, 1,154 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,274 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Muñoz 27,542 inhabitants where it started
    1,709 ha reached on 7 Mar
    0.2 %

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)
7 Mar 36.3 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Mar 37.0 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Mar 36.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Mar after 35.8 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Mar after 35.2 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Mar after 35.2 °C 41 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Mar after 36.9 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Mar after 35.0 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Mar after 29.2 °C 54 % 21 km/h 7.2 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Feb 2025
After · 16 Mar 2025

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 6 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak48 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1056 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
56789101112
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 · 35Every 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 7 March 2025 and 9 March 2025: 3 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 1,697 hectares (17.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Muñoz (1,709 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 36 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 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
What do you think is wrong?

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.