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Jiménez del Teul fire, May 2018 Jiménez del Teul

Out · last detection 9 Jun 2018, 09:21 UTC

The fire started on 15 May 2018 in Jiménez del Teul, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,250 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Zacatecas since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 10 in Mexico in 2018, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jiménez del Teul · 2017Mezquital · 2021Mezquital · 2021Valparaíso · 2017

Burnt area
12,250ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
15 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 May
2018
Heat detections
772
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
218MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 May9 Jun
9 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

15 May 2018 · 2 MW · 2 16 May 2018 · 4 MW · 6 18 May 2018 · 806 MW · 13 19 May 2018 · 194 MW · 20 20 May 2018 · 294 MW · 41 21 May 2018 · 84 MW · 24 22 May 2018 · 224 MW · 26 23 May 2018 · 323 MW · 50 24 May 2018 · 237 MW · 30 25 May 2018 · 18 MW · 14 26 May 2018 · 147 MW · 39 27 May 2018 · 268 MW · 69 28 May 2018 · 87 MW · 29 29 May 2018 · 77 MW · 14 30 May 2018 · 384 MW · 36 31 May 2018 · 90 MW · 16 1 Jun 2018 · 124 MW · 23 2 Jun 2018 · 267 MW · 38 3 Jun 2018 · 592 MW · 82 4 Jun 2018 · 553 MW · 68 5 Jun 2018 · 466 MW · 54 6 Jun 2018 · 50 MW · 33 7 Jun 2018 · 141 MW · 30 8 Jun 2018 · 10 MW · 12 9 Jun 2018 · 4 MW · 3
15 May 18 May 20 May 24 May 28 May 1 Jun 5 Jun 9 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

34°high
53km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 20.6 mm on 11 Jun.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.7% of the area of London (122 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. Jiménez del Teul where it started
    12,308 ha reached on 15 May
    10 %

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 15 May 2018 and burned 7,300 ha (the satellite measured 12,250 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)
15 May 27.2 °C 26 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 May 25.6 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
17 May 28.6 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
18 May 28.9 °C 17 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 May 27.7 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 May 27.5 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 May 28.0 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 May 27.9 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 May 28.6 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 May 30.8 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 May 29.1 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 May 30.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 May 31.9 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 May 32.6 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
29 May 32.2 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.7 mm High 31
30 May 33.0 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 May 33.0 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
1 Jun 33.9 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Jun 31.9 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Jun 30.0 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Jun 31.1 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Jun 31.3 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Jun 30.8 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jun 30.5 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Jun 28.0 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
9 Jun 26.4 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
10 Jun after 26.9 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
11 Jun after 25.6 °C 38 % 27 km/h 20.6 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 May 2018
After · 16 Jun 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 · 772Every 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 Jiménez del Teul fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 May 2018 and 9 June 2018: 26 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 12,250 hectares (122.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jiménez del Teul (12,308 ha, 10 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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.

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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. 772 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 7,300 official ha against 12,250 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.