How long did the Coyuca de Catalán fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 April 2017 to 11 May 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 April 2017 to 4 May 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,445 hectares (94.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coyuca de Catalán (9,226 ha, 2.7 %); Zihuatanejo de Azueta (264 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2017-04-11 → 2017-05-11

Coyuca de Catalán fire, 11 April 2017 Coyuca de Catalán, Zihuatanejo de Azueta

Out · last detection 10 May 2017, 18:59 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2017 in Coyuca de Catalán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,445 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 36th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 25 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.2 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…

Suggestions: Coyuca de Catalán · 2019 Coyuca de Catalán · 2024 Coyuca de Catalán · 2017 Coyuca de Catalán · 2021

Burnt area: 9,445ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 31days; 11 Apr 2017 – 11 May 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 11 Apr; 2017
Heat detections: 675; in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 100MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr11 May

Play back 10 May 2017

How it evolved, day by day

11 Apr 16 Apr 20 Apr 24 Apr 28 Apr 30 Apr 2 May 8 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

30°high

42km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 12 May.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 323 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (94 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

Coyuca de Catalán where it started

9,226 ha reached on 11 Apr

2.7 %
Zihuatanejo de Azueta

264 ha reached on 24 Apr

0.2 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.30 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.30 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2015, 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

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)
11 Apr	29.5 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Apr	28.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
13 Apr	26.0 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 28
14 Apr	27.5 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Apr	27.0 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Apr	26.6 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.7 mm	High 26
17 Apr	26.5 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
18 Apr	27.2 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
19 Apr	26.5 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
20 Apr	27.8 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
21 Apr	27.2 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Apr	28.1 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 36
23 Apr	27.7 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
24 Apr	26.1 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
25 Apr	27.5 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
26 Apr	27.4 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
27 Apr	26.6 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Apr	28.1 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
29 Apr	27.3 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
30 Apr	29.7 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 May	28.6 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
2 May	27.8 °C	35 %	34 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 11
3 May	26.8 °C	41 %	32 km/h	4.7 mm	Very low 4
4 May	28.2 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 12
5 May	25.8 °C	44 %	35 km/h	6.9 mm	Very low 2
6 May	25.1 °C	43 %	39 km/h	4.2 mm	Very low 2
7 May	26.0 °C	39 %	30 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 3
8 May	27.2 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 11
9 May	26.1 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 15
10 May	28.5 °C	34 %	32 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 10
11 May	28.6 °C	35 %	34 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 12
12 May after	27.1 °C	38 %	34 km/h	2.1 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Apr 2017

After · 18 May 2017

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.

Detections table · 675Every 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 Coyuca de Catalán fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 April 2017 to 11 May 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 April 2017 to 4 May 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,445 hectares (94.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coyuca de Catalán (9,226 ha, 2.7 %); Zihuatanejo de Azueta (264 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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.

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 April 2017 to 4 May 2017. 675 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned