How long did the Casimiro Castillo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 May 2017 to 30 May 2017 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 May 2017 to 23 May 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,813 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Casimiro Castillo (3,613 ha, 6.9 %); La Huerta (1,023 ha, 0.5 %); Villa Purificación (202 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2017-05-05 → 2017-05-30

Casimiro Castillo fire, May 2017 Casimiro Castillo, La Huerta, Villa Purificación

Out · last detection 30 May 2017, 19:24 UTC

The fire started on 5 May 2017 in Casimiro Castillo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,813 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 38th largest in Jalisco since 2016 (of 283 with a page). Number 69 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Huerta · 2016 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2016 La Huerta · 2016 Villa Purificación · 2017

Burnt area: 4,813ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 5 May 2017 – 30 May 2017
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 5 May; 2017
Heat detections: 350; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 May30 May

Play back 30 May 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 May 9 May 13 May 17 May 19 May 21 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

33°high

42km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 31 May.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 853 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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

3,613 ha reached on 5 May

6.9 %
La Huerta

1,023 ha reached on 19 May

0.5 %
Villa Purificación

202 ha reached on 11 May

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
5 May	30.9 °C	40 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
6 May	31.5 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
7 May	31.3 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 May	31.1 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 May	31.6 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
10 May	32.0 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 May	31.8 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 May	31.7 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 May	30.7 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 May	31.8 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 May	31.9 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 May	32.1 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 May	31.2 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 May	32.1 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 May	31.5 °C	39 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 May	30.4 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 May	31.0 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 May	32.3 °C	39 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 May	31.3 °C	48 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 May	31.5 °C	47 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 May	31.3 °C	43 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 May	32.6 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 May	31.7 °C	44 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 May	31.1 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 May	30.7 °C	43 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
30 May	31.5 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
31 May after	31.3 °C	48 %	36 km/h	4.0 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Apr 2017

After · 6 Jun 2017

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 · 350Every 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 5 May 2017 to 30 May 2017 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 May 2017 to 23 May 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,813 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Casimiro Castillo (3,613 ha, 6.9 %); La Huerta (1,023 ha, 0.5 %); Villa Purificación (202 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

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 5 May 2017 to 23 May 2017. 350 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