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Pedraza fire, 25 February 2019 Pedraza

Out · last detection 2 Mar 2019, 17:20 UTC

The fire started on 25 February 2019 in Pedraza, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,887 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Barinas since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 9 in Venezuela in 2019, of 296.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pedraza · 2020Muñoz · 2020Muñoz · 2019Muñoz · 2026

Burnt area
6,887ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
25 Feb 2019 – 2 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Feb
2019
Heat detections
220
in a single hotspot: 505 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
798MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Feb2 Mar
2 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Feb 2019 · 2,095 MW · 57 26 Feb 2019 · 429 MW · 59 27 Feb 2019 · 1,752 MW · 23 28 Feb 2019 · 194 MW · 39 1 Mar 2019 · 293 MW · 26 2 Mar 2019 · 22 MW · 3
25 Feb 26 Feb 27 Feb 28 Feb 1 Mar 2 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

35°high
44km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (69 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

  1. Pedraza 6,568 inhabitants where it started
    6,929 ha reached on 25 Feb
    1.0 %

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)
25 Feb 34.0 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Feb 34.2 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Feb 33.9 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Feb 34.3 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Mar 35.0 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Mar 35.0 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Mar after 33.5 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Mar after 34.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Mar after 34.9 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Mar after 35.0 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Mar after 34.5 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Mar after 35.6 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Mar after 33.6 °C 44 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
10 Mar after 34.9 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
11 Mar after 33.7 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Mar after 33.1 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Mar after 34.0 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Mar after 35.0 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Mar after 35.9 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Mar after 36.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 35
17 Mar after 36.0 °C 36 % 47 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 · 18 Feb 2019
After · 9 Mar 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 220Every 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 Pedraza fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 February 2019 and 2 March 2019: 6 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 6,887 hectares (68.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pedraza (6,929 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 44 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 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.

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. 220 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.

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 (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.