How long did the Campeche fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2020 to 25 April 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 April 2020 to 23 April 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,113 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Campeche (1,598 ha, 0.5 %); Champotón (524 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.

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 · 2020-04-07 → 2020-04-25

Campeche fire, April 2020 Campeche, Champotón

Out · last detection 25 Apr 2020, 19:30 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2020 in Campeche, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,113 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 59th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 138 with a page). Number 141 in Mexico in 2020, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Champotón · 2021 Champotón · 2020 Champotón · 2020 Champotón · 2024

Burnt area: 2,113ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 7 Apr 2020 – 25 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 7 Apr; 2020
Heat detections: 142; in a single hotspot: 329 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 192MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr25 Apr

Play back 25 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 14 Apr 17 Apr 20 Apr 23 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

42°high

54km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Campeche where it started

1,598 ha reached on 7 Apr

0.5 %
Champotón 15,297 inhabitants

524 ha reached on 14 Apr

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

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)
7 Apr	38.4 °C	33 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Apr	38.6 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
9 Apr	39.8 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Apr	40.3 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
11 Apr	39.1 °C	25 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
12 Apr	41.7 °C	26 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Apr	40.9 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Apr	39.1 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Apr	38.6 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Apr	37.5 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Apr	38.2 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
18 Apr	38.3 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
19 Apr	38.6 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Apr	38.6 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Apr	39.5 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Apr	37.9 °C	36 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
23 Apr	40.6 °C	27 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 Apr	39.2 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Apr	38.3 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.7 mm	High 35
26 Apr after	38.6 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Apr after	35.8 °C	37 %	42 km/h	0.6 mm	High 37
28 Apr after	37.0 °C	37 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Apr after	37.5 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Apr after	35.9 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	High 38
1 May after	36.0 °C	31 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 May after	35.6 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 May after	36.3 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 May after	36.2 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
5 May after	36.4 °C	42 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Mar 2020

After · 2 May 2020

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.

Detections table · 142Every 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 Campeche fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2020 to 25 April 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 April 2020 to 23 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,113 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Campeche (1,598 ha, 0.5 %); Champotón (524 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 April 2020 to 23 April 2020. 142 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 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.

Where it burned