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Concordia fire, May 2023 Concordia, San Dimas

Out · last detection 14 May 2023, 08:33 UTC

The fire started on 8 May 2023 in Concordia, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,883 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 61th largest in Sinaloa since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 197 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Concordia · 2025Concordia · 2024Mazatlán · 2025San Ignacio · 2021

Burnt area
1,883ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
8 May 2023 – 14 May 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
8 May
2023
Heat detections
97
in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
149MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 May14 May
14 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

9 May 2023 · 261 MW · 37 10 May 2023 · 339 MW · 28 11 May 2023 · 119 MW · 22 12 May 2023 · 6 MW · 5 14 May 2023 · 21 MW · 5
9 May 10 May 11 May 12 May 14 May

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
45km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 20 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Concordia where it started
    1,877 ha reached on 9 May
    0.9 %
  2. San Dimas
    16 ha
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.29 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 8 May 2023 and burned 888 ha (the satellite measured 1,883 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
8 May 30.8 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 May 29.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 May 29.5 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 May 28.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 May 27.9 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 May 27.2 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 May 26.8 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 May after 28.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 May after 27.2 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
17 May after 26.5 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
18 May after 27.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
19 May after 28.2 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 May after 28.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 May 2023
After · 21 May 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 11 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1054 µg/m³
Optical depth0.29
6789101112131415
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 · 97Every 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 Concordia fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 May 2023 to 14 May 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 May 2023 to 12 May 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,883 hectares (18.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concordia (1,877 ha, 0.9 %); San Dimas (16 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 May 2023 → 14 May 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 May 2023 to 12 May 2023. 97 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 888 official ha against 1,883 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.