How long did the Lagos de Moreno fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 May 2017 and 21 May 2017: 16 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 14 May 2017 and declared extinguished on 19 May 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,843 hectares (168.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lagos de Moreno (13,032 ha, 5.2 %); Ojuelos de Jalisco (3,900 ha, 3.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2017-05-06 → 2017-05-21

Lagos de Moreno fire, May 2017 Lagos de Moreno, Ojuelos de Jalisco

Out · last detection 21 May 2017, 20:34 UTC

The fire started on 6 May 2017 in Lagos de Moreno, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,843 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 14 May 2017 and declared extinguished on 19 May 2017.

It is the 6th largest in Jalisco since 2016 (of 283 with a page). Number 7 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lagos de Moreno · 2025 Ojuelos de Jalisco · 2023 Lagos de Moreno · 2019 El Llano · 2025

Burnt area: 16,843ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 6 May 2017 – 21 May 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 6 May; 2017
Heat detections: 767; in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 501MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 May21 May

Play back 21 May 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 May 9 May 12 May 15 May 18 May 21 May

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

47km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 29 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (168 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

Lagos de Moreno 172,403 inhabitants where it started

13,032 ha reached on 6 May

5.2 %
Ojuelos de Jalisco

3,900 ha reached on 12 May

3.4 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 14 May 2017 and burned 19,679 ha (the satellite measured 16,843 ha).

Lagos de Moreno Cerro del Vigia 14 May 2017 19,679 ha · extinguished on 19 May 2017 · cause: negligence

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)
6 May	27.1 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 May	26.9 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 May	26.7 °C	16 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
9 May	27.5 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 May	29.7 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
11 May	29.4 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
12 May	30.3 °C	14 %	47 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 60
13 May	28.8 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
14 May	28.0 °C	11 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
15 May	29.7 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
16 May	30.2 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 May	30.7 °C	6 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
18 May	30.6 °C	5 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
19 May	30.6 °C	6 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
20 May	30.8 °C	5 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 May	31.3 °C	7 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
22 May after	31.5 °C	6 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
23 May after	30.5 °C	7 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
24 May after	30.6 °C	4 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
25 May after	29.5 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
26 May after	31.3 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 56
27 May after	31.3 °C	4 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
28 May after	30.0 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
29 May after	28.6 °C	24 %	48 km/h	2.6 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Apr 2017

After · 28 May 2017

Before After

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 · 767Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lagos de Moreno fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 May 2017 and 21 May 2017: 16 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 14 May 2017 and declared extinguished on 19 May 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,843 hectares (168.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lagos de Moreno (13,032 ha, 5.2 %); Ojuelos de Jalisco (3,900 ha, 3.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 767 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 19,679 official ha against 16,843 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned