Burned area
satellite only1,214ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 14 May 2024 – 18 May 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
BZ · Belize · –
Toledo fire, 14 May 2024 Toledo
Out · last detection 18 May 2024, 07:55 UTC
The fire started on 14 May 2024 in Toledo, Belize, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,214 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 10 in Belize in 2024, of 14.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-25matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
14 May 2024 to 18 May 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 18 May 2024, 07:55 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only14 May 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 14 May 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only34
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 61 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 14 May 2024 – 18 May 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only463MW
Total radiative power on 17 May 2024; hotspots that day: 22.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 17 May 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model23.6FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 14.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 14 May 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model39.2°C · 40% RH
High of 39.2 °C and minimum humidity of 40% on 17 May 2024; gusts of 38 km/h on 14 May 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 14 May 2024 – 18 May 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 30people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 0.41 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logStart date: 16 May 2024 → 14 May 2024.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 25 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,214 ha
- Dates
- 14 May 2024 – 18 May 2024
- Name
- Toledo
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/toledo-2024-05-6?v=2026-10-25A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire toledo-2024-05-6.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-14 | 0 | 0 | 38.5 | 26.8 | 44 | 14.8 | 38.5 | 0 | 23.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-05-15 | 1 | 11 | 38.2 | 26.5 | 43 | 14.2 | 36.7 | 0 | 23.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-05-16 | 10 | 290 | 36.5 | 26.7 | 48 | 13.9 | 33.5 | 0 | 24.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-05-17 | 22 | 463 | 39.2 | 26.4 | 40 | 15.3 | 36 | 0 | 27 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-05-18 | 1 | 3 | 38.5 | 27.7 | 42 | 15.5 | 34.9 | 0 | 27.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2024-05-19 | 0 | 0 | 38.1 | 27.3 | 40 | 10.8 | 31.3 | 0.7 | 23.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-20 | 0 | 0 | 37 | 27.4 | 46 | 14.1 | 36.7 | 0.6 | 23.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-21 | 0 | 0 | 36.8 | 25.6 | 48 | 14.8 | 40 | 0.3 | 24.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-22 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 25.7 | 52 | 14.5 | 37.4 | 0.4 | 24.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-23 | 0 | 0 | 35.3 | 25.5 | 51 | 16 | 36.7 | 0.1 | 25.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-24 | 0 | 0 | 37.7 | 26.1 | 46 | 15.9 | 37.4 | 0 | 26.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-25 | 0 | 0 | 38.4 | 27.2 | 45 | 13 | 34.6 | 0.1 | 25.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-26 | 0 | 0 | 38.9 | 26.8 | 43 | 16.7 | 38.9 | 0 | 29.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-27 | 0 | 0 | 38.5 | 27 | 46 | 14.5 | 39.6 | 0 | 28 | alto | 0 |
| 2024-05-28 | 0 | 0 | 36.4 | 27.1 | 53 | 17.2 | 43.9 | 0.6 | 24.1 | alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,214ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 14 May 2024 – 18 May 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 14 May
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 61 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 192MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
14 May18 May
18 May 2024
How it evolved, day by day
15 May
16 May
17 May
18 May
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
39°high
38km/h · peak gust
40%lowest humidity
It had gone 14 days 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?
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
-
Toledo where it started1,221 ha reached on 15 May0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area0.41 ha
Residents≈ 30
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 May | 38.5 °C | 44 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 15 May | 38.2 °C | 43 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 16 May | 36.5 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 17 May | 39.2 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 18 May | 38.5 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 May after | 38.1 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 23 |
| 20 May after | 37.0 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 23 |
| 21 May after | 36.8 °C | 48 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 22 May after | 35.9 °C | 52 % | 37 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 24 |
| 23 May after | 35.3 °C | 51 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 24 May after | 37.7 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 May after | 38.4 °C | 45 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 26 May after | 38.9 °C | 43 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 27 May after | 38.5 °C | 46 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 May after | 36.4 °C | 53 % | 44 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 24 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 23.6, a minimum humidity of 44% and 14 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 25.
FWI at the start
23.6
Minimum humidity
44 %
Days without rain
14
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Toledo fire, 14 May 2024
1,214 ha
5 days
FWI 23.6
Min. humidity 44 %
Quezaltepeque fire, April 2017
1,021 ha
4 days
FWI 25.0
Min. humidity 45 %
183 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 19 Apr.
Poptún fire, April 2020
2,189 ha
10 days
FWI 26.3
Min. humidity 42 %
58 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
La Libertad fire, April 2023
1,163 ha
7 days
FWI 24.8
Min. humidity 43 %
229 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 17 Apr.
La Libertad fire, April 2020
1,351 ha
18 days
FWI 19.5
Min. humidity 42 %
201 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 28 Apr.
Cobán fire, April 2020
1,057 ha
15 days
FWI 19.9
Min. humidity 46 %
190 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.7 mm on 14 May.
What happened to them
- 10 days
- median duration
- 1,281 ha
- median area
- 100 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 1.5 mm
- rain at the end (median; 24 of 25 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (1,214 ha against a median of 1,281 ha) and lasted 5 days, against 10 days.
In 1 of 25, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
38km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 18 May, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 24 of 25, with a median of 1.5 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 7 May 2024
After · 25 May 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 16 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak55 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1078 µg/m³
Optical depth1.92
WHO 15
14 May16 May18 May20 May
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 · 34Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Toledo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 May 2024 to 18 May 2024 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 May 2024 to 18 May 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,214 hectares (12.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Toledo (1,221 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Belize (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 25. Their median duration was 10 days and their median area 1,281 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 1 of 25, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings
- NEMO ↗
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 16 May 2024 → 14 May 2024.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 May 2024 to 18 May 2024. 34 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 ADM1 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic). 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.