Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, March 2023 Ajuchitlán del Progreso
The fire started on 22 March 2023 in Ajuchitlán del Progreso, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,423 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 195th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 84 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.
- Burnt area
- 3,423ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 22 Mar 2023 – 28 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 22 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 160
- in a single hotspot: 45 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 108MW
- 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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 835 ha in 2016, 2,905 ha in 2017, 206 ha in 2018, 2,792 ha in 2019, 1,276 ha in 2020, 45 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,371 ha that had burned before.
- 2,905 ha Coyuca de Catalán fire, March 2017 43,113 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,792 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2019 34,994 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 657 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2020 5,312 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 542 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, May 2020 1,674 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 259 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2016 1,869 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 206 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2018 1,815 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 61 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, May 2020 18,639 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 45 ha Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire, April 2021 5,466 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 started3,441 ha reached on 22 Mar1.7 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Official record
According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 22 March 2023 and burned 2,733 ha (the satellite measured 3,423 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Ajuchitlán del Progreso Mesas De Buena Vista 22 March 2023 2,733 ha · extinguished on 28 March 2023 · cause: unknown
CONAFOR (Comisión Nacional Forestal), estadística de incendios forestales en datos.gob.mx (CC BY 4.0). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Mar | 33.0 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Mar | 33.7 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Mar | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Mar | 32.0 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Mar | 31.9 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 27 Mar | 32.4 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Mar | 32.9 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Mar after | 33.7 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Mar after | 30.7 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Mar after | 32.9 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 1 Apr after | 33.9 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Apr after | 34.0 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 3 Apr after | 34.4 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Apr after | 32.5 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Apr after | 32.6 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Apr after | 31.7 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Apr after | 33.1 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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 29 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 160Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 34,994 haAjuchitlán del Progreso30 April 2019 · 29 days · 6 km away
- 15,541 haAjuchitlán del Progreso25 April 2023 · 20 days · 6 km away
- 18,639 haAjuchitlán del Progreso5 May 2020 · 32 days · 16 km away
- 14,680 haSan Miguel TotolapanApril 2022 · 27 days · 19 km away
- 27,274 haCoyuca de Catalán22 April 2024 · 39 days · 24 km away
- 43,113 haCoyuca de Catalán29 March 2017 · 46 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ajuchitlán del Progreso fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 March 2023 and 28 March 2023: 7 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 3,423 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ajuchitlán del Progreso (3,441 ha, 1.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 160 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 2,733 official ha against 3,423 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- 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 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.