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MX · Mexico · –

Nuevo Morelos fire, 14 March 2025 Nuevo Morelos

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2025, 08:31 UTC

The fire started on 14 March 2025 in Nuevo Morelos, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,457 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Tamaulipas since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 84 in Mexico in 2025, of 163.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ciudad Valles · 2022Ciudad Valles · 2019Nuevo Morelos · 2025Nuevo Morelos · 2023

Burnt area
2,457ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Mar 2025 – 17 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Mar
2025
Heat detections
112
in a single hotspot: 214 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Mar17 Mar
16 Mar 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Mar 2025 · 369 MW · 3 15 Mar 2025 · 3,487 MW · 95 16 Mar 2025 · 15 MW · 14
14 Mar 15 Mar 16 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
53km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 26 Mar.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 122 ha in 2019, 78 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 137 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. Nuevo Morelos 3,381 inhabitants where it started
    2,468 ha reached on 14 Mar
    8.1 %

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 area0.49 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)

Started with Very dry air: 21 % of the area in Mexico

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Mar 41.3 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Mar 39.6 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Mar 29.9 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Mar 29.3 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Mar after 32.0 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Mar after 32.8 °C 35 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Mar after 25.4 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Mar after 28.2 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Mar after 31.0 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
23 Mar after 33.6 °C 53 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
24 Mar after 31.3 °C 53 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
25 Mar after 33.2 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
26 Mar after 30.0 °C 64 % 26 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 4

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 40.7, a minimum humidity of 13% and 13 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 14.

FWI at the start 40.7
Minimum humidity 13 %
Days without rain 13
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Ciudad Valles fire, March 2022
1,585 ha 10 days FWI 40.5 Min. humidity 13 % 61 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 14. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

3.7 mmfirst rain
26 Mar9 days after it ended
53km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 17 Mar, and on 26 Mar 3.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Mar 2025
After · 24 Mar 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 16 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 103 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 53: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak103 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10115 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
12 Mar14 Mar16 Mar18 Mar
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 · 112Every 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 Nuevo Morelos fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 March 2025 to 17 March 2025 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2025 to 16 March 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,457 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nuevo Morelos (2,468 ha, 8.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

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 March 2025 to 16 March 2025. 112 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.