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Ixtlán del Río fire, 5 March 2023 Amatlán de Cañas, Ixtlán del Río, San Marcos

Out · last detection 20 Mar 2023, 20:17 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2023 in Ixtlán del Río, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,662 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 75th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 118 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hostotipaquillo · 2017Amatlán de Cañas · 2021Ixtlán del Río · 2023Hostotipaquillo · 2026

Burnt area
2,662ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
5 Mar 2023 – 20 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
5 Mar
2023
Heat detections
148
in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
49MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar20 Mar
20 Mar 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2023 · 2 MW · 2 6 Mar 2023 · 16 MW · 4 7 Mar 2023 · 24 MW · 8 8 Mar 2023 · 52 MW · 15 9 Mar 2023 · 154 MW · 28 10 Mar 2023 · 67 MW · 25 11 Mar 2023 · 60 MW · 18 12 Mar 2023 · 32 MW · 12 13 Mar 2023 · 33 MW · 13 14 Mar 2023 · 7 MW · 3 15 Mar 2023 · 17 MW · 5 16 Mar 2023 · 2 MW · 2 18 Mar 2023 · 15 MW · 2 19 Mar 2023 · 239 MW · 7 20 Mar 2023 · 18 MW · 4
5 Mar 8 Mar 11 Mar 14 Mar 18 Mar 19 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

28°high
55km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,411 ha in 2017, 1,435 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,579 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Amatlán de Cañas
    2,289 ha reached on 7 Mar
    4.4 %
  2. Ixtlán del Río where it started
    361 ha reached on 5 Mar
    0.7 %
  3. San Marcos
    26 ha
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 6 March 2023 and burned 2,009 ha (the satellite measured 2,662 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
5 Mar 27.8 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Mar 28.3 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Mar 27.5 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Mar 27.3 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Mar 27.3 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Mar 27.8 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Mar 26.3 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Mar 26.8 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Mar 27.2 °C 20 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Mar 26.1 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Mar 27.2 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Mar 24.9 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Mar 24.9 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Mar 25.0 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
19 Mar 24.2 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Mar 24.2 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Mar after 25.7 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Mar after 27.9 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
23 Mar after 27.7 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Mar after 26.4 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Mar after 27.7 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Mar after 26.8 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Mar after 28.0 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Mar after 28.7 °C 11 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Mar after 28.1 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Mar after 26.3 °C 24 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2023
After · 27 Mar 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 15 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1082 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
34567891011121314151617181920212223
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 148Every 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 Ixtlán del Río fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 March 2023 and 20 March 2023: 16 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 2,662 hectares (26.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Amatlán de Cañas (2,289 ha, 4.4 %); Ixtlán del Río (361 ha, 0.7 %); San Marcos (26 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 55 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 ›

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. 148 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 2,009 official ha against 2,662 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 2025, 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.