Skip to content
worldfires
MX · Mexico · →

Carmen fire, May 2023 Carmen

Out · last detection 12 Jun 2023, 19:00 UTC

The fire started on 30 May 2023 in Carmen, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,365 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 38 in Mexico in 2023, of 286.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
5,365ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
30 May 2023 – 12 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 May
2023
Heat detections
179
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jun 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 May12 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

30311234567891112

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
44km/h · peak gust
39%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 22 Jun.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,066 ha in 2016, 3,397 ha in 2020, 2,874 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,059 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Carmen 248,845 inhabitants where it started
    5,392 ha reached on 30 May
    0.6 %

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)
30 May 33.3 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 May 33.0 °C 59 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 21
1 Jun 33.3 °C 56 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
2 Jun 32.8 °C 57 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Jun 31.6 °C 59 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
4 Jun 31.7 °C 58 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Jun 32.5 °C 61 % 31 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 5
6 Jun 33.2 °C 60 % 31 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 4
7 Jun 33.3 °C 61 % 33 km/h 0.8 mm Low 9
8 Jun 33.6 °C 60 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Jun 34.0 °C 56 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Jun 34.9 °C 53 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
11 Jun 36.8 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Jun 36.3 °C 51 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
13 Jun after 36.9 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Jun after 37.7 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jun after 38.2 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jun after 38.3 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jun after 38.0 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jun after 37.8 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Jun after 37.5 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Jun after 37.1 °C 45 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
21 Jun after 36.3 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
22 Jun after 36.5 °C 45 % 46 km/h 1.2 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 May 2023
After · 19 Jun 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 5 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1056 µg/m³
Optical depth1.74
28293031123456789101112131415
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 · 179Every 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 30 May 2023 and 12 June 2023: 14 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 5,365 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carmen (5,392 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

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.

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.