Chicomuselo fire, May 2024 Chicomuselo, La Concordia
The fire started on 16 May 2024 in Chicomuselo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,691 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 14 in Mexico in 2024, of 289.
The power measured by the satellite is low (25.1 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…
- Burnt area
- 9,691ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 16 May 2024 – 30 May 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 16 May
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 537
- in a single hotspot: 25 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 188MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 7 Jun.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,928 ha in 2016, 2,029 ha in 2017, 706 ha in 2018, 412 ha in 2019, 3,308 ha in 2021, 11 ha in 2022, 2,450 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,062 ha that had burned before.
- 2,568 ha Chicomuselo fire, April 2016 3,691 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,029 ha Chicomuselo fire, May 2017 2,127 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,360 ha La Concordia fire, April 2016 1,704 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,310 ha La Concordia fire, May 2023 1,762 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,292 ha La Concordia fire, May 2021 2,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 841 ha La Concordia fire, April 2023 7,494 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 706 ha La Concordia fire, April 2018 5,850 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 299 ha La Concordia fire, May 2023 2,249 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Chicomuselo where it started5,626 ha reached on 16 May5.6 %
-
4,121 ha reached on 23 May1.6 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.69 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 May | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 17 May | 35.7 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 18 May | 33.2 °C | 47 % | 19 km/h | 3.9 mm | Low 6 |
| 19 May | 31.4 °C | 56 % | 22 km/h | 10.5 mm | Very low 2 |
| 20 May | 34.9 °C | 38 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 21 May | 35.7 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 22 May | 34.8 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 23 May | 33.8 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 23 |
| 24 May | 35.0 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
| 25 May | 35.3 °C | 43 % | 23 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 26 May | 35.1 °C | 42 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 27 |
| 27 May | 36.3 °C | 35 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 28 May | 36.5 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 29 |
| 29 May | 37.2 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 30 May | 36.9 °C | 30 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 31 May after | 36.8 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Jun after | 35.8 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Jun after | 37.0 °C | 31 % | 21 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Jun after | 35.4 °C | 37 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Jun after | 35.0 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Jun after | 35.1 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Jun after | 34.6 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Jun after | 31.0 °C | 51 % | 22 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 29 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 537Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,494 haLa Concordia24 April 2023 · 8 days · 7 km away
- 5,850 haLa ConcordiaApril 2018 · 14 days · 7 km away
- 8,399 haLa Concordia17 April 2020 · 13 days · 28 km away
- 7,326 haLa ConcordiaMarch 2023 · 15 days · 29 km away
- 7,013 haLa Concordia17 April 2017 · 18 days · 29 km away
- 4,767 haLa ConcordiaApril 2024 · 13 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chicomuselo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 May 2024 and 30 May 2024: 15 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 9,691 hectares (96.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chicomuselo (5,626 ha, 5.6 %); La Concordia (4,121 ha, 1.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 ›
Satellite cross-check
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.
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
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. 537 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.