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Del Nayar fire, 5 April 2021 Del Nayar

Out · last detection 26 Apr 2021, 08:55 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2021 in Del Nayar, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 11 April 2021 and declared extinguished on 20 April 2021.

It is the 92th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 172 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.8 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: Del Nayar · 2018Del Nayar · 2016Del Nayar · 2019Mezquital · 2022

Burnt area
2,253ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
5 Apr 2021 – 26 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Apr
2021
Heat detections
140
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
41MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr26 Apr
26 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2021 · 15 MW · 3 6 Apr 2021 · 13 MW · 3 11 Apr 2021 · 1 MW · 1 12 Apr 2021 · 11 MW · 4 13 Apr 2021 · 1 MW · 1 14 Apr 2021 · 79 MW · 14 15 Apr 2021 · 39 MW · 11 16 Apr 2021 · 250 MW · 37 17 Apr 2021 · 22 MW · 8 18 Apr 2021 · 95 MW · 30 19 Apr 2021 · 76 MW · 12 20 Apr 2021 · 7 MW · 1 21 Apr 2021 · 41 MW · 6 22 Apr 2021 · 2 MW · 2 25 Apr 2021 · 7 MW · 5 26 Apr 2021 · 2 MW · 2
5 Apr 12 Apr 15 Apr 16 Apr 18 Apr 21 Apr 26 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

29°high
53km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,004 ha in 2016, 1,193 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,539 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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
    2,270 ha reached on 5 Apr
    0.4 %

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 11 April 2021 and burned 2,755 ha (the satellite measured 2,253 ha).

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)
11 Apr 27.1 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Apr 27.8 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Apr 28.2 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Apr 28.9 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Apr 28.3 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Apr 28.2 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Apr 26.1 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Apr 25.5 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Apr 25.6 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Apr 26.6 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Apr 27.3 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Apr 26.5 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Apr 26.3 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Apr 28.0 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Apr 28.2 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Apr 27.3 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Apr after 26.8 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
28 Apr after 25.2 °C 42 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Apr after 24.7 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Apr after 24.7 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 May after 24.0 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 May after 25.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 May after 25.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 May after 27.2 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 May after 29.8 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 May after 29.6 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2021
After · 3 May 2021

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 · 140Every 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 5 April 2021 to 26 April 2021 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 April 2021 to 19 April 2021. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 11 April 2021 and declared extinguished on 20 April 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,253 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Del Nayar (2,270 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 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 ›

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.

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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 12 April 2021 to 19 April 2021. 140 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 2,755 official ha against 2,253 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.