Skip to content
worldfires
en
MX · Mexico · →

Othón P. Blanco fire, March 2022 Othón P. Blanco, Bacalar

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2022, 07:35 UTC

The fire started on 16 March 2022 in Othón P. Blanco, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,793 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 33th largest in Quintana Roo since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 179 in Mexico in 2022, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Othón P. Blanco · 2020Bacalar · 2020Othón P. Blanco · 2020Othón P. Blanco · 2020

Burnt area
1,793ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
16 Mar 2022 – 29 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Mar
2022
Heat detections
82
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
121MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Mar29 Mar
27 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

16 Mar 2022 · 51 MW · 3 17 Mar 2022 · 115 MW · 11 18 Mar 2022 · 225 MW · 18 19 Mar 2022 · 381 MW · 12 20 Mar 2022 · 57 MW · 5 21 Mar 2022 · 25 MW · 4 22 Mar 2022 · 264 MW · 17 23 Mar 2022 · 98 MW · 4 24 Mar 2022 · 2 MW · 2 26 Mar 2022 · 112 MW · 4 27 Mar 2022 · 2 MW · 2
16 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar 22 Mar 24 Mar 27 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

33°high
58km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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. Othón P. Blanco where it started
    1,355 ha reached on 16 Mar
    0.1 %
  2. Bacalar 12,527 inhabitants
    448 ha reached on 17 Mar
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.38 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 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

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)
16 Mar 32.7 °C 51 % 30 km/h 1.6 mm Low 7
17 Mar 31.3 °C 57 % 46 km/h 1.4 mm Low 9
18 Mar 32.1 °C 59 % 48 km/h 1.2 mm Low 10
19 Mar 31.7 °C 63 % 44 km/h 1.0 mm Low 8
20 Mar 32.5 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
21 Mar 32.4 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
22 Mar 32.6 °C 49 % 58 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
23 Mar 32.4 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
24 Mar 32.5 °C 47 % 32 km/h 3.0 mm Low 6
25 Mar 32.9 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Mar 30.8 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
27 Mar 30.2 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
28 Mar 29.9 °C 56 % 44 km/h 1.8 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Mar 2022
After · 5 Apr 2022

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 · 82Every 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 Othón P. Blanco fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 March 2022 to 29 March 2022 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 March 2022 to 27 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,793 hectares (17.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Othón P. Blanco (1,355 ha, 0.1 %); Bacalar (448 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 27 March 2022 → 29 March 2022.

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
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 16 March 2022 to 27 March 2022. 82 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 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.