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Candelaria fire, 27 April 2023 Candelaria

Out · last detection 12 May 2023, 18:41 UTC

The fire started on 27 April 2023 in Candelaria, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,502 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 41th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 138 with a page). Number 128 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Candelaria · 2016Candelaria · 2023Candelaria · 2020Candelaria · 2019

Burnt area
2,502ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
27 Apr 2023 – 12 May 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Apr
2023
Heat detections
149
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
65MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Apr12 May
12 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Apr 2023 · 21 MW · 5 28 Apr 2023 · 7 MW · 2 29 Apr 2023 · 203 MW · 17 30 Apr 2023 · 7 MW · 6 1 May 2023 · 11 MW · 2 4 May 2023 · 13 MW · 1 5 May 2023 · 72 MW · 14 6 May 2023 · 44 MW · 17 7 May 2023 · 81 MW · 15 8 May 2023 · 219 MW · 21 9 May 2023 · 154 MW · 30 10 May 2023 · 9 MW · 1 11 May 2023 · 24 MW · 8 12 May 2023 · 44 MW · 10
27 Apr 29 Apr 1 May 5 May 7 May 8 May 9 May 11 May

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
50km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.4 mm on 14 May.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 285 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
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

  1. Candelaria 9,812 inhabitants where it started
    2,515 ha reached on 27 Apr
    0.4 %

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.

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)
27 Apr 41.8 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Apr 40.0 °C 32 % 22 km/h 1.7 mm High 27
29 Apr 41.3 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 48
30 Apr 31.7 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
1 May 39.2 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 May 41.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 May 41.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 May 40.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 May 40.9 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 May 40.2 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 May 40.2 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 May 39.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 May 39.5 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 May 40.4 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 May 40.8 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 May 40.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 4.9 mm High 25
13 May after 40.6 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 May after 31.9 °C 51 % 33 km/h 9.4 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Apr 2023
After · 19 May 2023

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 3 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1069 µg/m³
Optical depth1.18
234567891011121314
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 · 149Every 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 Candelaria fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 April 2023 to 12 May 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 May 2023 to 11 May 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,502 hectares (25.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Candelaria (2,515 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 50 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 ›

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 4 May 2023 to 11 May 2023. 149 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.

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.