Culiacán fire, May 2023 Culiacán
The fire started on 18 May 2023 in Culiacán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,891 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 59th largest in Sinaloa since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 196 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,891ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 18 May 2023 – 26 May 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 18 May
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 106
- in a single hotspot: 109 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 226MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 38 ha in 2018.
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
-
1,907 ha reached on 18 May0.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.26 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 22 May 2023 and burned 1,000 ha (the satellite measured 1,891 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Culiacán San Cayetano 22 May 2023 1,000 ha · extinguished on 25 May 2023 · cause: unknown
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 May | 34.8 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 22 May | 34.6 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 23 May | 33.5 °C | 14 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 24 May | 33.1 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 May | 32.7 °C | 10 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 26 May | 32.4 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 27 May after | 31.2 °C | 18 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 May after | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 May after | 29.6 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 30 May after | 30.1 °C | 25 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 May after | 31.5 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Jun after | 30.4 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Jun after | 31.2 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 3 Jun after | 30.4 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Jun after | 32.9 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 5 Jun after | 32.2 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 27 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 106Every 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 Culiacán fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 May 2023 to 26 May 2023 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 May 2023 to 26 May 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,891 hectares (18.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Culiacán (1,907 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 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 · 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.
- Start date: 21 May 2023 → 18 May 2023.
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 21 May 2023 to 26 May 2023. 106 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 1,000 official ha against 1,891 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.
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.