Ricaurte fire, February 2024 Ricaurte
The fire started on 24 February 2024 in Ricaurte, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,391 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 90th largest in Cojedes since 2016 (of 219 with a page). Number 202 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,391ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 24 Feb 2024 – 5 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 108
- in a single hotspot: 102 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 206MW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 466 ha in 2019, 604 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 711 ha that had burned before.
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
-
2,406 ha reached on 24 Feb2.5 %
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 | 37.6 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 25 Feb | 38.6 °C | 23 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Feb | 37.7 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 27 Feb | 37.2 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Feb | 37.4 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 29 Feb | 37.1 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 1 Mar | 38.5 °C | 21 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Mar | 37.4 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 3 Mar | 38.0 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 4 Mar | 38.6 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 5 Mar | 39.7 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Mar after | 37.9 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Mar after | 38.3 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 38 |
| 8 Mar after | 38.8 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Mar after | 39.8 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Mar after | 38.8 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Mar after | 40.1 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 12 Mar after | 40.0 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Mar after | 40.3 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Mar after | 40.1 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Mar after | 40.2 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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 6 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 108Every 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 Ricaurte fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 February 2024 and 5 March 2024: 11 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 2,391 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ricaurte (2,406 ha, 2.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
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. 108 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.