San Ignacio fire, January 2025 San Ignacio
The fire started on 31 January 2025 in San Ignacio, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,072 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 53th largest in Sinaloa since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 109 in Mexico in 2025, of 166.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,072ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 31 Jan 2025 – 13 Feb 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 31 Jan
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 163
- in a single hotspot: 44 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 54MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 221 ha in 2022.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
San Ignacio where it started2,086 ha reached on 31 Jan0.4 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Jan | 23.8 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 1 Feb | 24.2 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 2 Feb | 25.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 3 Feb | 26.4 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 4 Feb | 25.8 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 5 Feb | 25.7 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 6 Feb | 26.3 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 7 Feb | 27.7 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 8 Feb | 27.6 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Feb | 26.9 °C | 26 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Feb | 25.9 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 11 Feb | 22.9 °C | 36 % | 49 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 12 Feb | 21.8 °C | 30 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 13 Feb | 24.8 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 14 Feb after | 25.9 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Feb after | 23.9 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 16 Feb after | 26.2 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 17 Feb after | 24.2 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Feb after | 23.6 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 19 Feb after | 26.3 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 20 Feb after | 26.6 °C | 19 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Feb after | 26.1 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Feb after | 26.8 °C | 17 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Feb after | 27.0 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 163Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 9,253 haSan IgnacioApril 2025 · 18 days · 11 km away
- 49,719 haSan IgnacioMarch 2025 · 65 days · 15 km away
- 7,405 haSan Dimas8 May 2024 · 14 days · 26 km away
- 15,732 haTamazula19 May 2018 · 24 days · 29 km away
- 12,257 haTamazula30 May 2019 · 31 days · 29 km away
- 10,267 haSan Ignacio10 May 2018 · 29 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the San Ignacio fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 January 2025 to 13 February 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2025 to 10 February 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,072 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered San Ignacio (2,086 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, 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.
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
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 1 February 2025 to 10 February 2025. 163 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.
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.