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Tacámbaro fire, April 2019 Tacámbaro

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2019, 20:45 UTC

The fire started on 9 April 2019 in Tacámbaro, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,720 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 305 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tacámbaro · 2020Turicato · 2020Nocupétaro · 2025Nuevo Urecho · 2016

Burnt area
1,720ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
9 Apr 2019 – 23 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Apr
2019
Heat detections
73
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
77MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Apr23 Apr
19 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Apr 2019 · 45 MW · 12 10 Apr 2019 · 4 MW · 1 12 Apr 2019 · 76 MW · 3 13 Apr 2019 · 174 MW · 19 14 Apr 2019 · 190 MW · 19 15 Apr 2019 · 88 MW · 11 16 Apr 2019 · 34 MW · 7 19 Apr 2019 · 4 MW · 1
9 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 16 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

28°high
49km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 471 ha in 2016, 612 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 820 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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. Tacámbaro where it started
    1,729 ha reached on 9 Apr
    2.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.59 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.59 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2020, 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

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)
9 Apr 27.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Apr 26.6 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Apr 27.3 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Apr 24.9 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Apr 25.0 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Apr 26.5 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Apr 28.3 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Apr 27.9 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Apr 29.1 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Apr 28.7 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Apr 27.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Apr 28.6 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Apr 27.3 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Apr 27.1 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Apr 29.6 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Apr after 26.8 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Apr after 27.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Apr after 29.0 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Apr 2019
After · 30 Apr 2019

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 · 73Every 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 Tacámbaro fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 April 2019 to 23 April 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2019 to 16 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,720 hectares (17.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tacámbaro (1,729 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 April 2019 → 23 April 2019.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 9 April 2019 to 16 April 2019. 73 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.