How long did the Minatitlán fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 May 2022 to 24 May 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 May 2022 to 23 May 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,114 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Minatitlán (1,074 ha, 2.6 %); Coquimatlán (538 ha, 1.0 %); Manzanillo (514 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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.

MX · Mexico · 2022-05-15 → 2022-05-24

Minatitlán fire, May 2022 Minatitlán, Coquimatlán, Manzanillo

Out · last detection 23 May 2022, 08:07 UTC

The fire started on 15 May 2022 in Minatitlán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 131 in Mexico in 2022, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coquimatlán · 2016 Villa de Álvarez · 2024 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2024 Cuautitlán de García Barragán · 2022

Burnt area: 2,114ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 15 May 2022 – 24 May 2022
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 15 May; 2022
Heat detections: 162; in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 114MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 May24 May

Play back 23 May 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 May 17 May 18 May 19 May 21 May 23 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

27°high

45km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 172 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Minatitlán 10,231 inhabitants where it started

1,074 ha reached on 15 May

2.6 %
Coquimatlán 20,837 inhabitants

538 ha reached on 17 May

1.0 %
Manzanillo

514 ha reached on 18 May

0.4 %

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 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 2022 and burned 1,342 ha (the satellite measured 2,114 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Minatitlán Ejido Arrayanal / Cerro del Ocote 15 May 2022 1,342 ha · extinguished on 28 May 2022 · cause: arson

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	26.2 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 May	26.0 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 May	26.8 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 May	26.6 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 May	25.8 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 May	24.6 °C	50 %	41 km/h	0.3 mm	High 25
21 May	24.6 °C	53 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 May	25.1 °C	52 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
23 May	24.5 °C	52 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
24 May	24.7 °C	50 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 May after	25.5 °C	49 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 May after	24.8 °C	51 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 May after	26.1 °C	50 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 May after	25.7 °C	54 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 May after	24.5 °C	54 %	43 km/h	0.4 mm	High 22
30 May after	24.8 °C	53 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 May after	25.1 °C	56 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
1 Jun after	24.8 °C	53 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
2 Jun after	23.8 °C	57 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 May 2022

After · 31 May 2022

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 · 162Every 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 Minatitlán fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 May 2022 to 24 May 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 May 2022 to 23 May 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,114 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Minatitlán (1,074 ha, 2.6 %); Coquimatlán (538 ha, 1.0 %); Manzanillo (514 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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 ›

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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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 15 May 2022 to 23 May 2022. 162 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 1,342 official ha against 2,114 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.

Where it burned