How long did the Cosalá fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 May 2025 and 26 May 2025: 11 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 5,828 hectares (58.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tamazula (5,611 ha, 1.0 %); Cosalá (222 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2025-05-16 → 2025-05-26

Cosalá fire, May 2025 Tamazula, Cosalá

Out · last detection 27 May 2025, 20:37 UTC

The fire started on 16 May 2025 in Cosalá, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,828 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 16th largest in Sinaloa since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 24 in Mexico in 2025, of 167.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 5,828ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 16 May 2025 – 26 May 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 16 May; 2025
Heat detections: 510; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 2.4GW; sum of detected power

Play back 27 May 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 May26 May

How it evolved, day by day

161718192021222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

51km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.1 mm on 31 May.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,374 ha in 2017, 4,652 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,440 ha that had burned before.

3,503 ha Tamazula fire, May 2023 6,040 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Tamazula

5,611 ha reached on 14 May

1.0 %
Cosalá where it started

222 ha reached on 10 May

0.1 %

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.

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)
9 May	35.5 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 May	35.2 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
11 May	33.9 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 43
12 May	32.9 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 May	34.2 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 May	33.8 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 May	35.7 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 May	36.3 °C	17 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 May	35.6 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 May	35.1 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 May	34.5 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
20 May	36.5 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
21 May	37.9 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
22 May	36.7 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
23 May	36.5 °C	16 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 May	36.7 °C	19 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
25 May	35.1 °C	26 %	45 km/h	1.5 mm	High 30
26 May	34.6 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 May after	35.1 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 May after	34.9 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 May after	34.5 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 May after	27.7 °C	44 %	27 km/h	0.6 mm	High 26
31 May after	30.9 °C	39 %	34 km/h	12.1 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 May 2025

After · 2 Jun 2025

Before After

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 25 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 176 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak176 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10181 µg/m³

Optical depth0.59

WHO 15

891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345

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 · 510Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cosalá fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 May 2025 and 26 May 2025: 11 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 5,828 hectares (58.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tamazula (5,611 ha, 1.0 %); Cosalá (222 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned