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Champotón fire, 1 April 2023 Champotón

Out · last detection 16 Apr 2023, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2023 in Champotón, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,519 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 138 with a page). Number 37 in Mexico in 2023, of 286.

Burnt area
5,519ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
1 Apr 2023 – 16 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Apr
2023
Heat detections
438
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
207MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

16 Apr 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr16 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

1 Apr 2023 · 28 MW · 7 2 Apr 2023 · 213 MW · 15 3 Apr 2023 · 140 MW · 24 4 Apr 2023 · 265 MW · 41 5 Apr 2023 · 52 MW · 14 6 Apr 2023 · 64 MW · 18 7 Apr 2023 · 298 MW · 41 8 Apr 2023 · 1,234 MW · 81 9 Apr 2023 · 324 MW · 61 10 Apr 2023 · 57 MW · 19 11 Apr 2023 · 18 MW · 5 13 Apr 2023 · 45 MW · 7 14 Apr 2023 · 295 MW · 30 15 Apr 2023 · 70 MW · 17 16 Apr 2023 · 9 MW · 4
1 Apr 4 Apr 7 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 14 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
54km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 29 Apr.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 107 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Champotón 15,297 inhabitants where it started
    5,545 ha
    0.8 %

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)
29 Mar 37.2 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Mar 37.2 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Mar 37.1 °C 32 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Apr 38.1 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Apr 37.7 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Apr 39.9 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Apr 40.5 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Apr 40.4 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Apr 39.7 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Apr 37.9 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Apr 37.3 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Apr 37.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Apr 36.5 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Apr 35.6 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Apr 33.6 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Apr 36.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Apr 40.3 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Apr 41.3 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Apr 39.3 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Apr after 33.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
18 Apr after 36.4 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Apr after 38.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Apr after 39.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Apr after 39.7 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Apr after 38.6 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
23 Apr after 40.7 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
24 Apr after 35.9 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
25 Apr after 37.3 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
26 Apr after 40.4 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Apr after 41.1 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 45
28 Apr after 38.9 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
29 Apr after 38.8 °C 36 % 50 km/h 1.2 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 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 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak76 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10109 µg/m³
Optical depth2.10
303112345678910111213141516171819
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 · 438Every 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 1 April 2023 and 16 April 2023: 16 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 5,519 hectares (55.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Champotón (5,545 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

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. 438 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.