How long did the Casimiro Castillo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 May 2016 to 1 June 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 May 2016 to 27 May 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,393 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Casimiro Castillo (2,000 ha, 3.8 %); Cuautitlán de García Barragán (405 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2016-05-17 → 2016-06-01

Casimiro Castillo fire, 17 May 2016 Casimiro Castillo, Cuautitlán de García Barragán

Out · last detection 1 Jun 2016, 19:32 UTC

The fire started on 17 May 2016 in Casimiro Castillo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,393 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 136th largest in Jalisco since 2016 (of 283 with a page). Number 81 in Mexico in 2016, of 204.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Casimiro Castillo · 2017 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2024 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2016 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2017

Burnt area: 2,393ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 17 May 2016 – 1 Jun 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 17 May; 2016
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 47MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 May1 Jun

Play back 1 Jun 2016

How it evolved, day by day

17 May 19 May 21 May 23 May 24 May 25 May 27 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

32°high

41km/h · peak gust

35%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 6 Jun.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

Casimiro Castillo where it started

2,000 ha reached on 17 May

3.8 %
Cuautitlán de García Barragán

405 ha reached on 20 May

0.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area0.38 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
17 May	32.3 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	High 24
18 May	32.4 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
19 May	30.8 °C	47 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	High 24
20 May	30.7 °C	47 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
21 May	31.3 °C	47 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 23
22 May	31.8 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
23 May	31.1 °C	40 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 May	32.2 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
25 May	31.7 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 May	31.2 °C	48 %	33 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 13
27 May	31.1 °C	46 %	39 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 19
28 May	31.4 °C	49 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
29 May	31.5 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 May	31.3 °C	46 %	36 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 19
31 May	31.7 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.9 mm	High 22
1 Jun	31.4 °C	40 %	39 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
2 Jun after	31.6 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
3 Jun after	32.6 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
4 Jun after	31.1 °C	50 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
5 Jun after	29.0 °C	57 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
6 Jun after	30.3 °C	47 %	37 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 May 2016

After · 8 Jun 2016

Before After

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 · 93Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Casimiro Castillo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 May 2016 to 1 June 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 May 2016 to 27 May 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,393 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Casimiro Castillo (2,000 ha, 3.8 %); Cuautitlán de García Barragán (405 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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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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 18 May 2016 to 27 May 2016. 93 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.

Where it burned