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Carmen fire, 16 April 2020 Carmen

Out · last detection 18 Apr 2020, 20:01 UTC

The fire started on 16 April 2020 in Carmen, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,836 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 184 in Mexico in 2020, of 243.

Burnt area
1,836ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
16 Apr 2020 – 18 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Apr
2020
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
698MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Apr 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Apr18 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

161718

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
50km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 143 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Carmen 248,845 inhabitants where it started
    1,846 ha reached on 16 Apr
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
16 Apr 38.5 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Apr 40.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Apr 40.5 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Apr after 41.0 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Apr after 39.6 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Apr after 41.0 °C 31 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Apr after 40.8 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Apr after 44.1 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Apr after 37.2 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Apr after 38.2 °C 39 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
26 Apr after 36.4 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm High 31
27 Apr after 37.8 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Apr after 39.3 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Apr 2020
After · 25 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 · 60Every 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 Carmen fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 April 2020 and 18 April 2020: 3 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 1,836 hectares (18.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carmen (1,846 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.