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San Dimas fire, March 2023 San Dimas

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2023, 08:27 UTC

The fire started on 25 March 2023 in San Dimas, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,734 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 25 March 2023 and declared extinguished on 9 April 2023.

It is the 105th largest in Durango since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 116 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

The power measured by the satellite is low (23.2 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: San Dimas · 2024San Ignacio · 2018San Ignacio · 2025San Ignacio · 2025

Burnt area
2,734ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
25 Mar 2023 – 7 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Mar
2023
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Mar7 Apr
7 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

25 Mar 2023 · 74 MW · 13 26 Mar 2023 · 48 MW · 10 27 Mar 2023 · 2 MW · 2 28 Mar 2023 · 6 MW · 2 29 Mar 2023 · 38 MW · 9 30 Mar 2023 · 8 MW · 2 31 Mar 2023 · 171 MW · 32 1 Apr 2023 · 70 MW · 8 5 Apr 2023 · 8 MW · 1 7 Apr 2023 · 3 MW · 2
25 Mar 27 Mar 29 Mar 31 Mar 5 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

30°high
59km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 11 Apr.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 650 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. San Dimas where it started
    2,748 ha reached on 25 Mar
    0.5 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 25 March 2023 and burned 3,096 ha (the satellite measured 2,734 ha).

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)
25 Mar 28.0 °C 17 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Mar 26.3 °C 16 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Mar 27.6 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Mar 28.8 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Mar 28.1 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Mar 26.4 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Mar 28.5 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Apr 30.3 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Apr 29.8 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Apr 28.8 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Apr 25.9 °C 34 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Apr 27.8 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Apr 25.5 °C 26 % 57 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
7 Apr 27.3 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Apr after 29.0 °C 17 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Apr after 30.1 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Apr after 30.1 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Apr after 29.6 °C 29 % 47 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Mar 2023
After · 14 Apr 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 2 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
23242526272829303112345
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 · 81Every 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 San Dimas fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2023 to 7 April 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 March 2023 to 2 April 2023. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 25 March 2023 and declared extinguished on 9 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,734 hectares (27.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Dimas (2,748 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 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

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.

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 25 March 2023 to 2 April 2023. 81 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 3,096 official ha against 2,734 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.