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Del Nayar fire, 14 May 2018 Del Nayar

Out · last detection 29 May 2018, 20:40 UTC

The fire started on 14 May 2018 in Del Nayar, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,750 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 70th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 95 in Mexico in 2018, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Valparaíso · 2023Mezquital · 2023Del Nayar · 2019Del Nayar · 2017

Burnt area
2,750ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
14 May 2018 – 30 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 May
2018
Heat detections
143
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
54MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 May30 May
29 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 May 2018 · 15 MW · 4 15 May 2018 · 28 MW · 8 16 May 2018 · 41 MW · 13 17 May 2018 · 102 MW · 18 18 May 2018 · 31 MW · 8 19 May 2018 · 178 MW · 14 20 May 2018 · 118 MW · 22 21 May 2018 · 45 MW · 12 22 May 2018 · 85 MW · 21 23 May 2018 · 46 MW · 18 24 May 2018 · 6 MW · 3 26 May 2018 · 1 MW · 1 29 May 2018 · 12 MW · 1
14 May 16 May 18 May 19 May 20 May 22 May 24 May 29 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

33°high
54km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 31 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 1.7% of the area of London (28 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. Del Nayar where it started
    2,768 ha reached on 14 May
    0.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.3 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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

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)
14 May 30.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
15 May 31.3 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 May 31.0 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 May 32.0 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 May 31.1 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 May 29.1 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 May 29.2 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 May 30.0 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 May 30.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 May 30.7 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 May 32.7 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 May 32.3 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 May 32.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
27 May 32.2 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm High 33
28 May 31.8 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
29 May 32.1 °C 35 % 42 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 18
30 May 33.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 May after 33.2 °C 34 % 38 km/h 4.8 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 May 2018
After · 6 Jun 2018

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 · 143Every 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 Del Nayar fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 May 2018 to 30 May 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 May 2018 to 24 May 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,750 hectares (27.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Del Nayar (2,768 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

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
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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 14 May 2018 to 24 May 2018. 143 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 2020, 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.