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Champotón fire, 21 March 2023 Champotón

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2023, 19:51 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2023 in Champotón, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,263 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 137 with a page). Number 9 in Mexico in 2023, of 286.

Burnt area
10,263ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
21 Mar 2023 – 16 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
21 Mar
2023
Heat detections
800
in a single hotspot: 484 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Energy released
15.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Apr 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar16 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

21222324252627282930311234567891011121314151617

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
54km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,391 ha in 2017, 4,007 ha in 2020, 2,044 ha in 2021, 946 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,741 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Champotón 15,297 inhabitants where it started
    10,315 ha reached on 16 Mar
    1.5 %

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)
16 Mar 35.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Mar 39.1 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Mar 34.6 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
19 Mar 30.9 °C 56 % 38 km/h 5.3 mm Low 6
20 Mar 30.4 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Mar 36.4 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Mar 37.2 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
23 Mar 37.0 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Mar 39.7 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Mar 40.4 °C 27 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Mar 39.8 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Mar 40.0 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Mar 39.1 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Mar 37.6 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Mar 37.5 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Mar 37.0 °C 33 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Apr 38.4 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Apr 38.1 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Apr 40.1 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Apr 40.7 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Apr 40.5 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 Apr 40.0 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Apr 38.1 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Apr 37.8 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Apr 38.2 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Apr 37.5 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Apr 37.0 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Apr 35.9 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Apr 37.1 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 40.7 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Apr 41.5 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Apr 39.7 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Apr after 34.6 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Apr after 36.4 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Apr after 38.3 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr after 39.5 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Apr after 39.9 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Apr after 40.0 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Apr after 40.8 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Apr after 38.1 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Apr after 39.4 °C 29 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Apr after 40.4 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Apr after 41.5 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Apr after 40.2 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Apr after 40.9 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 46
30 Apr after 32.9 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
1 May after 38.6 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Mar 2023
After · 23 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 9 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak94 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10136 µg/m³
Optical depth2.59
1920212223242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819
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 · 800Every 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 Champotón fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2023 and 16 April 2023: 27 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 10,263 hectares (102.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Champotón (10,315 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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.

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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.