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Juchitán fire, April 2017 Azoyú, Juchitán

Out · last detection 28 Apr 2017, 19:23 UTC

The fire started on 16 April 2017 in Juchitán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,813 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 253th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 145 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Azoyú · 2024Igualapa · 2017Igualapa · 2024San Luis Acatlán · 2019

Burnt area
2,813ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
16 Apr 2017 – 28 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Apr
2017
Heat detections
111
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
74MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Apr28 Apr
28 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

16 Apr 2017 · 39 MW · 3 17 Apr 2017 · 164 MW · 11 18 Apr 2017 · 87 MW · 10 19 Apr 2017 · 139 MW · 15 20 Apr 2017 · 69 MW · 12 21 Apr 2017 · 115 MW · 17 22 Apr 2017 · 50 MW · 12 23 Apr 2017 · 31 MW · 4 24 Apr 2017 · 132 MW · 19 25 Apr 2017 · 45 MW · 5 26 Apr 2017 · 9 MW · 2 28 Apr 2017 · 2 MW · 1
16 Apr 17 Apr 18 Apr 20 Apr 22 Apr 24 Apr 26 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
48km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 4 May.

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 1.8% of the area of London (28 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. Azoyú
    2,578 ha reached on 16 Apr
    6.5 %
  2. Juchitán where it started
    250 ha reached on 16 Apr
    1.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.96 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.96 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
16 Apr 36.4 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Apr 35.8 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
18 Apr 34.9 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Apr 35.1 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr 35.6 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
21 Apr 35.4 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Apr 35.5 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Apr 35.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Apr 35.9 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Apr 36.0 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Apr 34.4 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Apr 34.4 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Apr 33.8 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Apr after 34.7 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Apr after 34.9 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 May after 34.6 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 May after 36.1 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
3 May after 35.9 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm High 27
4 May after 35.4 °C 45 % 39 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 9 Apr 2017
After · 5 May 2017

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 · 111Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Juchitán fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 April 2017 to 28 April 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 April 2017 to 26 April 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,813 hectares (28.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Azoyú (2,578 ha, 6.5 %); Juchitán (250 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 48 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 April 2017 to 26 April 2017. 111 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 (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.