Ensenada fire, 26 June 2017 Ensenada
The fire started on 26 June 2017 in Ensenada, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,948 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Baja California since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 6 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 16,948ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 26 Jun 2017 – 6 Jul 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 26 Jun
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 760
- in a single hotspot: 413 MW
- Danger at start
- 62
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.8GW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 7 Jul.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Ensenada where it started17,355 ha reached on 26 Jun0.3 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Official record
According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 26 June 2017 and burned 21,538 ha (the satellite measured 16,948 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Ensenada Ejido Sierra de Juarez 26 June 2017 21,538 ha · extinguished on 10 July 2017 · 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jun | 35.6 °C | 12 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 27 Jun | 33.6 °C | 9 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 28 Jun | 31.2 °C | 5 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 29 Jun | 29.7 °C | 18 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 30 Jun | 32.8 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Jul | 31.2 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Jul | 32.4 °C | 7 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 3 Jul | 33.2 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 4 Jul | 35.4 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Jul | 34.4 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 33 |
| 6 Jul | 35.6 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Jul after | 37.0 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 32 |
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.
Detections table · 760Every 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 Ensenada fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 June 2017 to 6 July 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 June 2017 to 5 July 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,948 hectares (169.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ensenada (17,355 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 June 2017 to 5 July 2017. 760 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 21,538 official ha against 16,948 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 2015, 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.