Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, 30 April 2019 Ajuchitlán del Progreso, Coyuca de Catalán
The fire started on 30 April 2019 in Ajuchitlán del Progreso, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,994 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 2 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.
- Burnt area
- 34,994ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 29days
- 30 Apr 2019 – 28 May 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Apr
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 1,879
- in a single hotspot: 188 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 376MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 29 May.
This area had burned before
79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,660 ha in 2016, 24,486 ha in 2017, 2,765 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 27,661 ha that had burned before.
- 16,030 ha Coyuca de Catalán fire, March 2017 43,113 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,176 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, March 2017 3,168 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,954 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2017 6,171 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,879 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2016 1,869 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,513 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2018 1,815 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,453 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2016 1,799 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,251 ha Coyuca de Catalán fire, April 2018 1,632 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,107 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, May 2017 1,634 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
-
Ajuchitlán del Progreso where it started32,212 ha reached on 30 Apr16 %
-
2,956 ha reached on 2 May0.9 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Apr | 34.5 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 May | 35.2 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 May | 34.5 °C | 18 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 May | 34.0 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 May | 32.3 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 May | 32.1 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 May | 33.1 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 May | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 8 May | 33.8 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 May | 33.2 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 May | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 11 May | 33.6 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 May | 32.2 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 May | 32.3 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 14 May | 32.2 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 May | 31.7 °C | 32 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 May | 31.8 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 34 |
| 17 May | 29.8 °C | 38 % | 32 km/h | 1.9 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 18 May | 32.1 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 22 |
| 19 May | 34.3 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 May | 34.2 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 21 May | 33.7 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 22 May | 32.9 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 May | 32.6 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 31 |
| 24 May | 31.7 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 4.4 mm | Low 7 |
| 25 May | 30.2 °C | 42 % | 28 km/h | 4.2 mm | Very low 4 |
| 26 May | 31.9 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 1.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 27 May | 30.2 °C | 47 % | 26 km/h | 4.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 28 May | 29.8 °C | 44 % | 27 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 May after | 28.7 °C | 48 % | 27 km/h | 1.4 mm | Low 7 |
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.
Detections table · 1,879Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,541 haAjuchitlán del Progreso25 April 2023 · 20 days · 1 km away
- 18,639 haAjuchitlán del Progreso5 May 2020 · 32 days · 20 km away
- 43,113 haCoyuca de Catalán29 March 2017 · 46 days · 21 km away
- 27,274 haCoyuca de Catalán22 April 2024 · 39 days · 21 km away
- 14,680 haSan Miguel TotolapanApril 2022 · 27 days · 24 km away
- 14,131 haCoyuca de Catalán29 April 2019 · 27 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 April 2019 to 28 May 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 May 2019 to 24 May 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,994 hectares (349.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ajuchitlán del Progreso (32,212 ha, 16 %); Coyuca de Catalán (2,956 ha, 0.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 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 Mexico (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 May 2019 to 24 May 2019. 1,879 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 2020, 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.