How long did the Santa Cruz fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 June 2016 to 12 June 2016 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 June 2016 to 9 June 2016. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 1 June 2016 and declared extinguished on 10 June 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,941 hectares (149.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santa Cruz (14,881 ha, 15 %); Cananea (120 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class Extreme.

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 · 2016-06-02 → 2016-06-12

Santa Cruz fire, June 2016 Santa Cruz, Cananea

Out · last detection 12 Jun 2016, 21:09 UTC

The fire started on 2 June 2016 in Santa Cruz, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,941 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 1 June 2016 and declared extinguished on 10 June 2016.

It is the 5th largest in Sonora since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 2 in Mexico in 2016, of 204.

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Burnt area: 14,941ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 2 Jun 2016 – 12 Jun 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 2 Jun; 2016
Heat detections: 798; in a single hotspot: 183 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 940MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jun12 Jun

Play back 12 Jun 2016

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jun 4 Jun 6 Jun 7 Jun 8 Jun 12 Jun

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high

52km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days 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 9.4% of the area of London (149 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

Santa Cruz where it started

14,881 ha reached on 2 Jun

15 %
Cananea

120 ha reached on 4 Jun

0.0 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.87 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.87 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 1 June 2016 and burned 15,749 ha (the satellite measured 14,941 ha).

Santa Cruz La Mision 1 June 2016 15,749 ha · extinguished on 10 June 2016 · cause: unknown

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)
2 Jun	33.6 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Jun	35.5 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
4 Jun	37.6 °C	7 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
5 Jun	37.0 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
6 Jun	35.6 °C	9 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
7 Jun	33.6 °C	14 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
8 Jun	32.9 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
9 Jun	32.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	8.0 mm	Low 7
10 Jun	28.0 °C	47 %	33 km/h	3.7 mm	Very low 5
11 Jun	28.2 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
12 Jun	30.9 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Jun after	29.8 °C	22 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Jun after	31.6 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Jun after	32.0 °C	9 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Jun after	33.4 °C	9 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Jun after	35.6 °C	9 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Jun after	38.3 °C	9 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
19 Jun after	40.1 °C	6 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
20 Jun after	36.4 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 49
21 Jun after	36.0 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Jun after	34.9 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 May 2016

After · 19 Jun 2016

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 · 798Every 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 Santa Cruz fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 June 2016 to 12 June 2016 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 June 2016 to 9 June 2016. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 1 June 2016 and declared extinguished on 10 June 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,941 hectares (149.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santa Cruz (14,881 ha, 15 %); Cananea (120 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class Extreme.
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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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 2 June 2016 to 9 June 2016. 798 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 15,749 official ha against 14,941 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned