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La Yesca fire, 1 April 2017 La Yesca

Out · last detection 4 Apr 2017, 20:15 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2017 in La Yesca, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,604 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 163th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 330 in Mexico in 2017, of 375.

Burnt area
1,604ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
1 Apr 2017 – 4 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Apr
2017
Heat detections
55
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
416MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Apr 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr4 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

1234

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
64km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. La Yesca where it started
    1,615 ha reached on 1 Apr
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
1 Apr 21.4 °C 14 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Apr 20.5 °C 21 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Apr 23.7 °C 14 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Apr 23.5 °C 13 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Apr after 27.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Apr after 26.8 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Apr after 26.4 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Apr after 27.5 °C 15 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Apr after 26.6 °C 14 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Apr after 28.5 °C 14 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Apr after 26.6 °C 19 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Apr after 27.0 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Apr after 25.8 °C 15 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Apr after 24.8 °C 14 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Mar 2017
After · 11 Apr 2017

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 · 55Every 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 La Yesca fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 April 2017 and 4 April 2017: 4 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 1,604 hectares (16.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered La Yesca (1,615 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 64 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.