Muñoz fire, 24 February 2026 Muñoz
The fire started on 24 February 2026 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,885 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 284th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 132 in Venezuela in 2026, of 396.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Muñoz · 2022Muñoz · 2024Muñoz · 2020Muñoz · 2021
- Burnt area
- 2,885ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 24 Feb 2026 – 26 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 61
- in a single hotspot: 115 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 556MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 568 ha in 2019, 1,264 ha in 2020, 1,081 ha in 2021, 1,755 ha in 2022, 342 ha in 2023, 2,403 ha in 2024, 699 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,800 ha that had burned before.
- 1,755 ha Muñoz fire, January 2022 3,132 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,551 ha Muñoz fire, February 2024 4,486 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,227 ha Muñoz fire, March 2020 7,071 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,081 ha Muñoz fire, March 2021 3,605 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 852 ha Muñoz fire, January 2024 6,130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 579 ha Muñoz fire, March 2025 1,697 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 568 ha Muñoz fire, March 2019 5,923 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 120 ha Muñoz fire, January 2025 3,277 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
-
2,905 ha reached on 24 Feb0.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Feb | 34.2 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Feb | 35.7 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Feb | 35.1 °C | 39 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 27 Feb after | 34.6 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Feb after | 35.1 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Mar after | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Mar after | 34.8 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Mar after | 36.2 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Mar after | 34.9 °C | 36 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Mar after | 34.3 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Mar after | 34.3 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Mar after | 35.7 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Mar after | 34.6 °C | 36 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
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 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 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 · 61Every 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 24 February 2026 and 26 February 2026: 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 2,885 hectares (28.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Muñoz (2,905 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 61 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.