Skip to content
worldfires
en
MX · Mexico · →

Huásabas fire, June 2018 Huásabas

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2018, 08:23 UTC

The fire started on 19 June 2018 in Huásabas, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,578 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 19 June 2018 and declared extinguished on 4 July 2018.

It is the 55th largest in Sonora since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 103 in Mexico in 2018, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villa Hidalgo · 2017

Burnt area
2,578ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
19 Jun 2018 – 28 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Jun
2018
Heat detections
210
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
157MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jun28 Jun
28 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jun 2018 · 69 MW · 11 20 Jun 2018 · 256 MW · 40 21 Jun 2018 · 648 MW · 50 22 Jun 2018 · 393 MW · 56 23 Jun 2018 · 88 MW · 31 24 Jun 2018 · 23 MW · 3 25 Jun 2018 · 21 MW · 5 26 Jun 2018 · 27 MW · 7 27 Jun 2018 · 42 MW · 3 28 Jun 2018 · 2 MW · 4
19 Jun 21 Jun 23 Jun 25 Jun 27 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 8 Jul.

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 1.6% of the area of London (26 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. Huásabas where it started
    2,588 ha reached on 19 Jun
    3.1 %

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 area0.24 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 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 19 June 2018 and burned 2,256 ha (the satellite measured 2,578 ha).

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)
19 Jun 32.5 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Jun 33.0 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jun 36.8 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jun 36.9 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Jun 31.5 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jun 31.9 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Jun 34.5 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jun 35.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Jun 35.1 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Jun 31.4 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jun after 30.7 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.7 mm High 33
30 Jun after 31.0 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Jul after 33.3 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Jul after 33.3 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Jul after 30.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
4 Jul after 33.5 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Jul after 34.6 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Jul after 34.9 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
7 Jul after 33.9 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jul after 32.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jun 2018
After · 5 Jul 2018

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 · 210Every 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 Huásabas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 June 2018 and 28 June 2018: 10 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 19 June 2018 and declared extinguished on 4 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,578 hectares (25.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Huásabas (2,588 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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
What do you think is wrong?

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. 210 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 2,256 official ha against 2,578 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.