How long did the Cabo Corrientes fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 March 2026 and 20 March 2026: 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 2,496 hectares (25.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cabo Corrientes (2,509 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2026-03-14 → 2026-03-20

Cabo Corrientes fire, 14 March 2026 Cabo Corrientes

Out · last detection 20 Mar 2026, 08:20 UTC

The fire started on 14 March 2026 in Cabo Corrientes, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,496 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 127th largest in Jalisco since 2016 (of 283 with a page). Number 51 in Mexico in 2026, of 145.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cabo Corrientes · 2025 Cabo Corrientes · 2026 Tomatlán · 2025 Cabo Corrientes · 2023

Burnt area: 2,496ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 14 Mar 2026 – 20 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 14 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 203; in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 382MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Mar20 Mar

Play back 20 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

46km/h · peak gust

35%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 29 Mar.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 148 ha in 2025.

148 ha Cabo Corrientes fire, March 2025 4,276 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

Cabo Corrientes where it started

2,509 ha reached on 15 Mar

1.6 %

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 2025

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 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

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)
14 Mar	31.0 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
15 Mar	30.0 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 Mar	28.2 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
17 Mar	27.2 °C	54 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Mar	27.5 °C	61 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
19 Mar	27.5 °C	63 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
20 Mar	27.4 °C	63 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
21 Mar after	26.8 °C	71 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
22 Mar after	27.3 °C	66 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
23 Mar after	27.5 °C	64 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
24 Mar after	28.0 °C	66 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
25 Mar after	27.8 °C	72 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
26 Mar after	28.5 °C	68 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
27 Mar after	27.8 °C	66 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
28 Mar after	28.1 °C	69 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
29 Mar after	28.8 °C	61 %	34 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Mar 2026

After · 27 Mar 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 17 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1054 µg/m³

Optical depth0.34

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 203Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cabo Corrientes fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 March 2026 and 20 March 2026: 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 2,496 hectares (25.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cabo Corrientes (2,509 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 203 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned