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Carmen fire, March 2023 Carmen

Out · last detection 3 Apr 2023, 19:13 UTC

The fire started on 31 March 2023 in Carmen, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,688 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 242 in Mexico in 2023, of 286.

Burnt area
1,688ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
31 Mar 2023 – 3 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Mar
2023
Heat detections
54
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
596MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

3 Apr 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Mar3 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

31123

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,267 ha in 2019, 1 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Carmen 248,845 inhabitants where it started
    1,699 ha reached on 29 Mar
    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)
31 Mar 36.0 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Apr 35.0 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Apr 35.1 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Apr 37.2 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Apr after 36.6 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Apr after 36.4 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Apr after 35.3 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Apr after 35.1 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Apr after 33.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Apr after 32.2 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Apr after 33.2 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
11 Apr after 32.4 °C 44 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Apr after 29.7 °C 53 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Apr after 30.9 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Mar 2023
After · 10 Apr 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 6 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10155 µg/m³
Optical depth0.88
293031123456
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 · 54Every 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 31 March 2023 and 3 April 2023: 4 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 1,688 hectares (16.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carmen (1,699 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

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.

Report an error
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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.