How long did the Guachochi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 April 2019 and 19 April 2019: 8 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 2,094 hectares (20.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Guachochi (2,095 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 82 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 2019-04-12 → 2019-04-19

Guachochi fire, April 2019 Guachochi

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2019, 07:52 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2019 in Guachochi, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,094 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 142th largest in Chihuahua since 2016 (of 234 with a page). Number 232 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.7 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: Guachochi · 2025 Guachochi · 2021

Burnt area: 2,094ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 12 Apr 2019 – 19 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 12 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 121; in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 61MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr19 Apr

Play back 19 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 13 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 18 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

25°high

82km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 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?

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

Guachochi where it started

2,095 ha reached on 12 Apr

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 area0.14 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of 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 12 April 2019 and burned 773 ha (the satellite measured 2,094 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Guachochi Ej. Guachochi 12 April 2019 773 ha · extinguished on 20 April 2019 · 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)
12 Apr	15.2 °C	16 %	82 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Apr	15.5 °C	25 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Apr	23.2 °C	15 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Apr	21.0 °C	20 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Apr	19.6 °C	18 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Apr	19.0 °C	23 %	77 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Apr	21.1 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Apr	24.7 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Apr after	23.3 °C	20 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Apr after	22.2 °C	23 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Apr after	19.7 °C	27 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Apr after	19.1 °C	21 %	68 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Apr after	18.3 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Apr after	24.0 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Apr after	26.2 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
27 Apr after	24.3 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Apr after	24.2 °C	13 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Apr after	23.5 °C	14 %	53 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 · 5 Apr 2019

After · 26 Apr 2019

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 · 121Every 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 Guachochi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 April 2019 and 19 April 2019: 8 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 2,094 hectares (20.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Guachochi (2,095 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 82 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 121 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 773 official ha against 2,094 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