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Bacalar fire, March 2020 Bacalar

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2020, 18:39 UTC

The fire started on 29 March 2020 in Bacalar, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,181 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Quintana Roo since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 64 in Mexico in 2020, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bacalar · 2017Bacalar · 2020Bacalar · 2018Othón P. Blanco · 2017

Burnt area
3,181ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
29 Mar 2020 – 17 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Mar
2020
Heat detections
204
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
133MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Mar17 Apr
17 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Mar 2020 · 87 MW · 3 30 Mar 2020 · 259 MW · 18 31 Mar 2020 · 535 MW · 14 1 Apr 2020 · 39 MW · 10 2 Apr 2020 · 7 MW · 2 3 Apr 2020 · 54 MW · 15 4 Apr 2020 · 189 MW · 22 5 Apr 2020 · 264 MW · 20 6 Apr 2020 · 128 MW · 29 7 Apr 2020 · 180 MW · 21 8 Apr 2020 · 52 MW · 14 9 Apr 2020 · 103 MW · 11 10 Apr 2020 · 365 MW · 12 11 Apr 2020 · 107 MW · 7 12 Apr 2020 · 2 MW · 2 15 Apr 2020 · 10 MW · 1 16 Apr 2020 · 10 MW · 2 17 Apr 2020 · 4 MW · 1
29 Mar 31 Mar 1 Apr 4 Apr 7 Apr 10 Apr 15 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

38°high
55km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Bacalar 12,527 inhabitants where it started
    3,196 ha reached on 29 Mar
    0.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.54 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.54 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 30 March 2020 and burned 1,983 ha (the satellite measured 3,181 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
29 Mar 34.8 °C 37 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Mar 32.5 °C 53 % 54 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20
31 Mar 33.9 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Apr 35.5 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Apr 35.8 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
3 Apr 35.1 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Apr 34.7 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Apr 34.7 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Apr 33.9 °C 46 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Apr 35.8 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Apr 36.0 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Apr 36.8 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Apr 36.9 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Apr 35.1 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Apr 36.1 °C 42 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Apr 37.6 °C 39 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 35.5 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Apr 34.7 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Apr 34.6 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
17 Apr 35.1 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Apr after 35.7 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Apr after 34.5 °C 45 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Apr after 37.0 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Apr after 36.2 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Apr after 34.4 °C 46 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
23 Apr after 36.1 °C 44 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Apr after 38.6 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Apr after 36.7 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Apr after 35.5 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Apr after 34.7 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.7 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Mar 2020
After · 24 Apr 2020

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 · 204Every 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 Bacalar fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 March 2020 to 17 April 2020 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 March 2020 to 12 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,181 hectares (31.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bacalar (3,196 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 55 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 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.

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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 29 March 2020 to 12 April 2020. 204 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 1,983 official ha against 3,181 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 2020, 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.