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Centla fire, 22 May 2025 Centla

Out · last detection 23 May 2025, 20:09 UTC

The fire started on 22 May 2025 in Centla, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 35th largest in Tabasco since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 161 in Mexico in 2025, of 166.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.1 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: Centla · 2018Centla · 2024Centla · 2021Carmen · 2026

Burnt area
1,541ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
22 May 2025 – 23 May 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 May
2025
Heat detections
36
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 May23 May
23 May 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 May 2025 · 108 MW · 26 23 May 2025 · 61 MW · 10
22 May 23 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

35°high
40km/h · peak gust
50%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 31 May.

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 698 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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

  1. Centla 107,731 inhabitants where it started
    1,550 ha
    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)
22 May 35.2 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 May 35.3 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 May after 35.7 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 May after 36.5 °C 46 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 May after 36.6 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 May after 36.4 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
28 May after 36.2 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 May after 35.3 °C 50 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 May after 34.3 °C 56 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
31 May after 32.7 °C 65 % 33 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 May 2025
After · 30 May 2025

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 26 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1050 µg/m³
Optical depth0.79
20212223242526
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 · 36Every 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 Centla fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 May 2025 and 23 May 2025: 2 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 1,541 hectares (15.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Centla (1,550 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 50 % and gusts hit 40 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

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 36 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.

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.