How long did the Petatlán fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 April 2017 to 17 April 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 April 2017 to 17 April 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,254 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Petatlán (3,272 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 46 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.

MX · Mexico · 2017-04-05 → 2017-04-17

Petatlán fire, April 2017 Petatlán

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2017, 08:20 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2017 in Petatlán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,254 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 209th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 124 in Mexico in 2017, of 375.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zihuatanejo de Azueta · 2020 Petatlán · 2019 Coyuca de Catalán · 2020 Zihuatanejo de Azueta · 2022

Burnt area: 3,254ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 5 Apr 2017 – 17 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 5 Apr; 2017
Heat detections: 141; in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr17 Apr

Play back 17 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 17 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

33°high

46km/h · peak gust

17%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?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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

Petatlán where it started

3,272 ha reached on 9 Apr

1.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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)
5 Apr	31.0 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Apr	31.2 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Apr	33.4 °C	17 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Apr	31.1 °C	36 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Apr	30.6 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Apr	31.1 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Apr	31.7 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Apr	30.9 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Apr	31.0 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.5 mm	High 30
14 Apr	30.9 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Apr	30.8 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Apr	31.0 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Apr	29.9 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Apr after	30.4 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Apr after	29.3 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Apr after	29.6 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Apr after	29.2 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
22 Apr after	28.7 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Apr after	28.6 °C	49 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Apr after	29.7 °C	43 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Apr after	30.9 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Apr after	28.9 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Apr after	28.0 °C	56 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Mar 2017

After · 24 Apr 2017

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 · 141Every 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 Petatlán fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 April 2017 to 17 April 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 April 2017 to 17 April 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,254 hectares (32.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Petatlán (3,272 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 46 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

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 8 April 2017 to 17 April 2017. 141 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.

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