How long did the Hopelchén fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 March 2017 to 29 March 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2017 to 25 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,568 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hopelchén (1,575 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 45 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.

MX · Mexico · 2017-03-11 → 2017-03-29

Hopelchén fire, 11 March 2017 Hopelchén

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2017, 18:46 UTC

The fire started on 11 March 2017 in Hopelchén, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,568 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 118th largest in Campeche since 2016 (of 138 with a page). Number 341 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hopelchén · 2023 Hopelchén · 2020 Hopelchén · 2023 Hopelchén · 2020

Burnt area: 1,568ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 11 Mar 2017 – 29 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 11 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 168; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 79MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Mar29 Mar

Play back 29 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Mar 16 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 28 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high

45km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 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% of the area of London (16 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

Hopelchén 42,140 inhabitants where it started

1,575 ha reached on 12 Mar

0.2 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 20 March 2017 and burned 682 ha (the satellite measured 1,568 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Hopelchén Iturbide 20 March 2017 682 ha · extinguished on 28 March 2017 · 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)
15 Mar	32.1 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Mar	32.1 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Mar	32.2 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Mar	33.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Mar	32.0 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Mar	33.1 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Mar	33.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Mar	33.8 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Mar	33.1 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Mar	33.9 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Mar	34.2 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Mar	33.7 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Mar	34.8 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Mar	35.6 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Mar	36.7 °C	34 %	51 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 44
30 Mar after	36.6 °C	37 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
31 Mar after	36.4 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Apr after	38.0 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Apr after	37.7 °C	35 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Apr after	38.8 °C	34 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Apr after	36.6 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Mar 2017

After · 5 Apr 2017

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 · 168Every 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 Hopelchén fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 March 2017 to 29 March 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2017 to 25 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,568 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hopelchén (1,575 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 45 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 March 2017 → 29 March 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 15 March 2017 → 11 March 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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What really happened?

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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 15 March 2017 to 25 March 2017. 168 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 682 official ha against 1,568 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.

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