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Pass Fire, May 2023 Catron

Out · last measured on 19 May 2023

The fire started on 19 May 2023 in Catron, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 26,761 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 4th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 3 in United States in 2023, of 305.

Burnt area
26,761ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
19 May 2023 – 19 May 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
19 May
2023
Heat detections
161
in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 May19 May

The weather it burned in

23°high
61km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 3 Jun.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,408 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Catron where it started
    26,643 ha reached on 22 May
    1.5 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
19 May 18.0 °C 28 % 45 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 2
20 May after 16.7 °C 43 % 56 km/h 8.9 mm Very low 1
21 May after 17.8 °C 29 % 45 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 2
22 May after 20.2 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
23 May after 21.8 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
24 May after 21.8 °C 11 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 May after 22.8 °C 10 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 May after 22.2 °C 9 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 May after 21.7 °C 12 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 May after 22.1 °C 9 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 May after 22.2 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 May after 22.3 °C 18 % 60 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
31 May after 20.9 °C 11 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Jun after 18.8 °C 11 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Jun after 20.5 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
3 Jun after 21.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 2.5 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 May 2023
After · 26 May 2023

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 17 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
171819202122
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 · 161Every 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 United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pass fire last?
It burned between 19 May 2023 and 19 May 2023: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 26,761 hectares (267.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Catron (26,643 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the official burnt perimeter of United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC, public domain), NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United States. 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter is official and in the public domain. For past years it comes from MTBS (Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity), run by the U.S. Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service, which map it on Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery. For the current and last year it comes from WFIGS at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC): incident perimeters mapped by fire crews, aircraft and imagery. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. County boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per county is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.