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Carmen fire, March 2021 Carmen

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2021, 18:51 UTC

The fire started on 22 March 2021 in Carmen, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,219 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 108 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

Burnt area
3,219ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
22 Mar 2021 – 29 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Mar
2021
Heat detections
116
in a single hotspot: 199 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Mar 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Mar29 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

2223242526272829

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
50km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 502 ha in 2016, 358 ha in 2017, 52 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Carmen 248,845 inhabitants where it started
    3,236 ha reached on 22 Mar
    0.4 %

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)
22 Mar 36.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Mar 39.6 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Mar 40.6 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar 41.4 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Mar 38.0 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Mar 38.8 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Mar 38.6 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Mar 37.2 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Mar after 37.7 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Mar after 38.2 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Apr after 34.4 °C 35 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Apr after 30.8 °C 45 % 54 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
3 Apr after 30.5 °C 34 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Apr after 33.2 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Apr after 33.6 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Apr after 35.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Apr after 37.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Apr after 39.0 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Mar 2021
After · 5 Apr 2021

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 · 116Every 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 22 March 2021 and 29 March 2021: 8 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 3,219 hectares (32.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carmen (3,236 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.