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Escárcega fire, April 2016 Escárcega

Out · last detection 18 May 2016, 18:53 UTC

The fire started on 29 April 2016 in Escárcega, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,128 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 58th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 138 with a page). Number 110 in Mexico in 2016, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Escárcega · 2019Escárcega · 2022Escárcega · 2023Escárcega · 2019

Burnt area
2,128ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
29 Apr 2016 – 18 May 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Apr
2016
Heat detections
134
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
66MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Apr18 May
18 May 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Apr 2016 · 10 MW · 3 1 May 2016 · 4 MW · 1 4 May 2016 · 6 MW · 2 5 May 2016 · 181 MW · 16 6 May 2016 · 210 MW · 18 7 May 2016 · 141 MW · 18 8 May 2016 · 22 MW · 7 9 May 2016 · 70 MW · 13 10 May 2016 · 88 MW · 8 11 May 2016 · 79 MW · 10 12 May 2016 · 17 MW · 3 13 May 2016 · 9 MW · 7 15 May 2016 · 7 MW · 1 16 May 2016 · 37 MW · 7 18 May 2016 · 103 MW · 20
29 Apr 5 May 6 May 8 May 11 May 15 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

42°high
49km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Escárcega 59,923 inhabitants where it started
    2,140 ha reached on 29 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.

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)
29 Apr 41.1 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Apr 41.0 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 May 40.2 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
2 May 40.6 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 May 39.6 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 May 35.8 °C 48 % 43 km/h 1.0 mm High 25
5 May 35.3 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 May 34.2 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 May 36.3 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 May 36.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 May 39.7 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 May 38.5 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 May 39.1 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 May 38.0 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 May 37.6 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
14 May 36.4 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 May 39.4 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 May 39.9 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 May 40.6 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.7 mm High 35
18 May 41.6 °C 36 % 33 km/h 6.4 mm Moderate 17
19 May after 39.3 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 May after 39.2 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
21 May after 39.0 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
22 May after 39.1 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 May after 40.2 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 May after 41.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 May after 41.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 May after 40.0 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 May after 38.9 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 May after 41.5 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Apr 2016
After · 25 May 2016

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 · 134Every 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 Escárcega fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 April 2016 to 18 May 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 May 2016 to 13 May 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,128 hectares (21.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Escárcega (2,140 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

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 4 May 2016 to 13 May 2016. 134 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.

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.