How long did the Guazapares fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 May 2020 to 23 May 2020 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 May 2020 to 20 May 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,072 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guazapares (1,987 ha, 1.1 %); Urique (88 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 2020-05-13 → 2020-05-23

Guazapares fire, May 2020 Guazapares, Urique

Out · last detection 23 May 2020, 20:48 UTC

The fire started on 13 May 2020 in Guazapares, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,072 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 147th largest in Chihuahua since 2016 (of 234 with a page). Number 147 in Mexico in 2020, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guazapares · 2016 Guazapares · 2017 Chínipas · 2023 Urique · 2017

Burnt area: 2,072ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 13 May 2020 – 23 May 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 13 May; 2020
Heat detections: 89; in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 46MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2020

How it evolved, day by day

13 May 14 May 15 May 17 May 19 May 23 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

28°high

46km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.4 mm on 31 May.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,204 ha in 2016.

1,204 ha Guazapares fire, June 2016 1,867 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

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

Guazapares where it started

1,987 ha reached on 13 May

1.1 %
Urique

88 ha reached on 15 May

0.0 %

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 13 May 2020 and burned 1,015 ha (the satellite measured 2,072 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Urique Ej. Algarrobal 13 May 2020 1,015 ha · extinguished on 20 May 2020 · 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)
13 May	26.9 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 May	26.6 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 May	26.8 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 May	27.5 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 May	28.3 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 May	28.4 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 May	28.1 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 May	26.9 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 May	26.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 May	27.6 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 May	27.8 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 May after	26.0 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 May after	26.3 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 May after	27.8 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 May after	27.0 °C	38 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 May after	29.2 °C	45 %	38 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
29 May after	30.6 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.9 mm	High 22
30 May after	32.0 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.3 mm	High 34
31 May after	27.5 °C	51 %	36 km/h	7.4 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 May 2020

After · 30 May 2020

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 · 89Every 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 Guazapares fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 May 2020 to 23 May 2020 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 May 2020 to 20 May 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,072 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guazapares (1,987 ha, 1.1 %); Urique (88 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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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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 13 May 2020 to 20 May 2020. 89 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 1,015 official ha against 2,072 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