Cintalapa fire, March 2020 Cintalapa
The fire started on 31 March 2020 in Cintalapa, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,976 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 73th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 77 in Mexico in 2020, of 242.
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- Burnt area
- 2,976ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 31 Mar 2020 – 15 Apr 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 31 Mar
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 158
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 110MW
- 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 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 16 Apr.
This area had burned before
39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,173 ha in 2017.
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
-
Cintalapa where it started2,992 ha reached on 31 Mar1.2 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.66 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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
Several official records match this area
According to CONAFOR, 4 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 1,930 ha (the satellite measured 2,976 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
CONAFOR records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.
- 1 Cintalapa Cordoba 31 March 2020 38 ha · extinguished on 1 April 2020 · cause: unknown
- 2 Cintalapa Nuevo Amanecer Tenejapa 2 April 2020 1,806 ha · extinguished on 9 April 2020 · cause: unknown
- 3 Cintalapa Nuevo centro de poblacion Luis Donaldo Colosio 8 April 2020 6 ha · extinguished on 10 April 2020 · cause: unknown
- 4 Cintalapa Las Palmas 11 April 2020 80 ha · extinguished on 14 April 2020 · cause: unknown
Total according to CONAFOR: 1,930 ha, 65 % of the 2,976 ha in the satellite perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Mar | 29.2 °C | 49 % | 36 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 1 Apr | 27.5 °C | 58 % | 28 km/h | 1.5 mm | Very low 5 |
| 2 Apr | 31.1 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 3 Apr | 31.0 °C | 44 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 4 Apr | 30.9 °C | 39 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 5 Apr | 32.7 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 6 Apr | 31.5 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 7 Apr | 31.8 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 8 Apr | 33.5 °C | 34 % | 22 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Apr | 33.3 °C | 34 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 10 Apr | 31.5 °C | 34 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Apr | 32.6 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 12 Apr | 28.6 °C | 51 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 13 Apr | 29.5 °C | 49 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Apr | 31.9 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 15 Apr | 28.5 °C | 56 % | 34 km/h | 3.5 mm | Very low 4 |
| 16 Apr after | 27.9 °C | 66 % | 39 km/h | 3.6 mm | Very low 3 |
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.
Detections table · 158Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cintalapa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 March 2020 to 15 April 2020 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 March 2020 to 9 April 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,976 hectares (29.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cintalapa (2,992 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 March 2020 to 9 April 2020. 158 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 1,930 official ha against 2,976 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- 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 2020, 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.