How long did the Del Nayar fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 March 2021 and 7 April 2021: 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 1,766 hectares (17.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Del Nayar (1,778 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · 2021-03-28 → 2021-04-07

Del Nayar fire, March 2021 Del Nayar

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2021, 08:12 UTC

The fire started on 28 March 2021 in Del Nayar, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,766 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 144th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 240 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Del Nayar · 2018 Valparaíso · 2023 Del Nayar · 2019 Mezquital · 2023

Burnt area: 1,766ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 28 Mar 2021 – 7 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 28 Mar; 2021
Heat detections: 90; in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 33MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Mar7 Apr

Play back 7 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

28 Mar 31 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 4 Apr 6 Apr

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

59km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,357 ha in 2018.

1,357 ha Del Nayar fire, May 2018 2,750 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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

Del Nayar where it started

1,778 ha reached on 28 Mar

0.3 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 30 March 2021 and burned 975 ha (the satellite measured 1,766 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Del Nayar San Juan Peyotan 30 March 2021 975 ha · extinguished on 7 April 2021 · cause: negligence

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)
28 Mar	30.0 °C	10 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Mar	27.0 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Mar	26.9 °C	14 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Mar	31.2 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Apr	27.9 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Apr	29.0 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 Apr	28.2 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.9 mm	High 26
4 Apr	28.0 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.5 mm	High 32
5 Apr	27.4 °C	18 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Apr	26.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Apr	28.8 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Apr after	28.8 °C	17 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Apr after	28.2 °C	19 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Apr after	27.4 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Apr after	27.8 °C	14 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Apr after	28.4 °C	16 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Apr after	29.2 °C	15 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Apr after	29.7 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Apr after	29.0 °C	19 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
16 Apr after	28.9 °C	19 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Apr after	27.1 °C	14 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Mar 2021

After · 14 Apr 2021

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 · 90Every 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 Del Nayar fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 March 2021 and 7 April 2021: 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 1,766 hectares (17.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Del Nayar (1,778 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 90 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 975 official ha against 1,766 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 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.

Where it burned