La Yesca fire, 18 May 2019 La Yesca, San Martín de Bolaños
The fire started on 18 May 2019 in La Yesca, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,721 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 33th largest in Nayarit since 2016 (of 181 with a page). Number 67 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,721ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 18 May 2019 – 25 May 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 18 May
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 264
- in a single hotspot: 89 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 322MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 May.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
La Yesca where it started4,332 ha reached on 18 May1.0 %
-
406 ha reached on 18 May0.6 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.40 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
Several official records match this area
According to CONAFOR, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 2,589 ha (the satellite measured 4,721 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
CONAFOR records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.
- 1 La Yesca El Pinole 18 May 2019 2,389 ha · extinguished on 26 May 2019 · cause: negligence
- 2 San Martín de Bolaños El Pinole 18 May 2019 200 ha · extinguished on 26 May 2019 · cause: negligence
Total according to CONAFOR: 2,589 ha, 55 % of the 4,721 ha in the satellite perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 May | 28.1 °C | 20 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 19 May | 31.6 °C | 9 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 20 May | 30.4 °C | 13 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 21 May | 29.9 °C | 9 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 22 May | 30.6 °C | 9 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 May | 31.1 °C | 12 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 May | 32.6 °C | 14 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 May | 31.7 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 May after | 30.8 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 May after | 28.7 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 24 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 264Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,965 haSan Martín de BolañosMay 2024 · 18 days · 6 km away
- 8,303 haLa Yesca3 June 2017 · 6 days · 13 km away
- 9,892 haTequilaMay 2023 · 14 days · 18 km away
- 7,550 haTequila24 May 2017 · 13 days · 26 km away
- 12,965 haLa Yesca24 April 2026 · 17 days · 32 km away
- 12,474 haLa Yesca16 May 2017 · 22 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the La Yesca fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 May 2019 to 25 May 2019 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 May 2019 to 24 May 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,721 hectares (47.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: La Yesca (4,332 ha, 1.0 %); San Martín de Bolaños (406 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.
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
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 18 May 2019 to 24 May 2019. 264 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 2,589 official ha against 4,721 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.
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.