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Mazatlán fire, April 2025 Mazatlán

Out · last detection 26 Apr 2025, 20:17 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2025 in Mazatlán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 50th largest in Sinaloa since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 95 in Mexico in 2025, of 166.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Ignacio · 2021Concordia · 2024San Ignacio · 2019San Ignacio · 2018

Burnt area
2,253ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
12 Apr 2025 – 26 Apr 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Apr
2025
Heat detections
346
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
114MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr26 Apr
26 Apr 2025

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 2025 · 55 MW · 7 13 Apr 2025 · 150 MW · 34 14 Apr 2025 · 119 MW · 21 15 Apr 2025 · 4 MW · 4 16 Apr 2025 · 26 MW · 5 19 Apr 2025 · 22 MW · 5 20 Apr 2025 · 139 MW · 12 21 Apr 2025 · 25 MW · 19 22 Apr 2025 · 276 MW · 69 23 Apr 2025 · 188 MW · 64 24 Apr 2025 · 408 MW · 79 25 Apr 2025 · 56 MW · 20 26 Apr 2025 · 20 MW · 7
12 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 20 Apr 22 Apr 24 Apr 26 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
43km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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. Mazatlán 501,441 inhabitants where it started
    2,268 ha reached on 12 Apr
    0.9 %

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

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)
12 Apr 34.5 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Apr 33.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 33.8 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr 34.7 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Apr 33.3 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Apr 34.1 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Apr 32.2 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Apr 32.1 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Apr 33.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Apr 32.2 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Apr 33.0 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Apr 32.2 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Apr 32.7 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Apr 33.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Apr 34.0 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Apr after 33.4 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Apr after 33.7 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Apr after 32.0 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Apr after 34.0 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 May after 34.6 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 May after 34.6 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 May after 33.9 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 May after 33.1 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 May after 31.4 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 May after 31.4 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Apr 2025
After · 3 May 2025

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 14 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
101112131415161718192021222324252627282930123456
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 · 346Every 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 Mazatlán fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 April 2025 to 26 April 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 April 2025 to 26 April 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,253 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mazatlán (2,268 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 43 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
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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 April 2025 to 26 April 2025. 346 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • 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.