Bacalar fire, March 2019 Bacalar
The fire started on 28 March 2019 in Bacalar, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,046 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 31th largest in Quintana Roo since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 245 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,046ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 28 Mar 2019 – 14 Apr 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Mar
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 233
- in a single hotspot: 54 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- 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 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.8 mm on 15 Apr.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,885 ha in 2016.
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
-
2,059 ha reached on 28 Mar0.3 %
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.
Official record
According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 28 March 2019 and burned 791 ha (the satellite measured 2,046 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Bacalar Rio Verde 28 March 2019 791 ha · extinguished on 21 April 2019 · cause: negligence
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Mar | 33.8 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Mar | 34.4 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Mar | 35.6 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Mar | 36.1 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Apr | 35.9 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Apr | 35.1 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Apr | 35.3 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 4 Apr | 35.0 °C | 38 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Apr | 35.8 °C | 36 % | 46 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Apr | 34.7 °C | 46 % | 56 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Apr | 35.3 °C | 42 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Apr | 37.6 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Apr | 33.4 °C | 36 % | 45 km/h | 3.1 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 10 Apr | 36.8 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Apr | 37.2 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Apr | 34.7 °C | 47 % | 47 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Apr | 35.2 °C | 48 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Apr | 38.8 °C | 34 % | 48 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Apr after | 31.7 °C | 60 % | 33 km/h | 14.8 mm | Very low 3 |
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 · 233Every 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 Bacalar fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 March 2019 to 14 April 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 April 2019 to 14 April 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,046 hectares (20.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bacalar (2,059 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Matched to the official record from CONAFOR.
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 4 April 2019 to 14 April 2019. 233 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 791 official ha against 2,046 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- 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 (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.