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Tancítaro fire, April 2022 Tancítaro, Uruapan, Apatzingán

Out · last detection 21 Apr 2022, 08:07 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2022 in Tancítaro, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,558 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 21th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 55 in Mexico in 2022, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apatzingán · 2016Gabriel Zamora · 2022Uruapan · 2022Gabriel Zamora · 2024

Burnt area
3,558ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
18 Apr 2022 – 21 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
18 Apr
2022
Heat detections
192
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
400MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr21 Apr
21 Apr 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 2022 · 624 MW · 32 19 Apr 2022 · 378 MW · 60 20 Apr 2022 · 580 MW · 92 21 Apr 2022 · 17 MW · 8
18 Apr 19 Apr 20 Apr 21 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
43km/h · peak gust
16%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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (36 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. Tancítaro where it started
    3,514 ha reached on 18 Apr
    4.9 %
  2. Uruapan
    36 ha
    0.0 %
  3. Apatzingán 126,191 inhabitants
    26 ha
    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 2020
Built-up area4.3 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.3 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 18 April 2022 and burned 1,822 ha (the satellite measured 3,558 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
18 Apr 30.4 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Apr 29.9 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr 30.5 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Apr 29.8 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Apr after 29.1 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
23 Apr after 27.9 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Apr after 28.9 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Apr after 28.9 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Apr after 29.1 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Apr after 28.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
28 Apr after 30.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Apr after 30.0 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Apr after 29.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 May after 30.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Apr 2022
After · 28 Apr 2022

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 · 192Every 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 Tancítaro fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2022 and 21 April 2022: 4 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,558 hectares (35.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Tancítaro (3,514 ha, 4.9 %); Uruapan (36 ha, 0.0 %); Apatzingán (26 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 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.

Report an error
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 192 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 1,822 official ha against 3,558 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • 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.