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Chilchota fire, March 2024 Chilchota

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2024, 09:10 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2024 in Chilchota, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,159 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 21 March 2024 and declared extinguished on 25 March 2024.

It is the 53th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 167 in Mexico in 2024, of 289.

Burnt area
2,159ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
21 Mar 2024 – 26 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
21 Mar
2024
Heat detections
132
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Mar 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar26 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

21222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
57km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 322 ha in 2016, 766 ha in 2019, 548 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,010 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Chilchota where it started
    2,171 ha reached on 20 Mar
    7.1 %

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.

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 21 March 2024 and burned 2,038 ha (the satellite measured 2,159 ha).

CONAFOR (Comisión Nacional Forestal), estadística de incendios forestales en datos.gob.mx (CC BY 4.0). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
20 Mar 27.2 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Mar 27.0 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Mar 28.1 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Mar 28.3 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Mar 25.4 °C 10 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Mar 23.6 °C 15 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Mar 25.6 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Mar after 29.1 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Mar after 28.0 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Mar after 27.5 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Mar after 27.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Mar after 27.7 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Apr after 26.5 °C 25 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Apr after 26.2 °C 35 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Apr after 27.3 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Apr after 25.0 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Apr after 26.5 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Apr after 26.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Apr after 28.6 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Apr after 26.4 °C 21 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Apr after 26.0 °C 25 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Apr after 25.5 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Apr after 27.7 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Mar 2024
After · 2 Apr 2024

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 28 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
1920212223242526272829
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 · 132Every 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 Chilchota fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2024 and 26 March 2024: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 21 March 2024 and declared extinguished on 25 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,159 hectares (21.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chilchota (2,171 ha, 7.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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.

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.