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Tepehuanes fire, 12 April 2018 Tepehuanes, Topia

Out · last detection 27 Apr 2018, 09:27 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2018 in Tepehuanes, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,867 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 64th largest in Durango since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 50 in Mexico in 2018, of 233.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Canelas · 2017Tepehuanes · 2025Canelas · 2025Santiago Papasquiaro · 2018

Burnt area
3,867ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
12 Apr 2018 – 27 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
12 Apr
2018
Heat detections
245
in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start
11
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
128MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr27 Apr
27 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 2018 · 5 MW · 1 13 Apr 2018 · 26 MW · 7 14 Apr 2018 · 45 MW · 5 15 Apr 2018 · 88 MW · 13 16 Apr 2018 · 222 MW · 26 17 Apr 2018 · 110 MW · 23 18 Apr 2018 · 212 MW · 46 19 Apr 2018 · 259 MW · 30 20 Apr 2018 · 733 MW · 33 21 Apr 2018 · 181 MW · 18 22 Apr 2018 · 2 MW · 1 23 Apr 2018 · 16 MW · 5 24 Apr 2018 · 26 MW · 6 25 Apr 2018 · 20 MW · 2 26 Apr 2018 · 110 MW · 26 27 Apr 2018 · 3 MW · 3
12 Apr 15 Apr 18 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr 24 Apr 27 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

26°high
58km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.1 mm on 5 May.

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 2.4% of the area of London (39 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. Tepehuanes where it started
    3,310 ha reached on 12 Apr
    0.5 %
  2. Topia
    571 ha reached on 16 Apr
    0.4 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 12 April 2018 and burned 2,006 ha (the satellite measured 3,867 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)
12 Apr 21.7 °C 36 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
13 Apr 19.8 °C 21 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
14 Apr 23.1 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
15 Apr 24.4 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Apr 23.8 °C 30 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Apr 23.1 °C 16 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Apr 25.2 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Apr 26.3 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Apr 23.8 °C 23 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Apr 24.0 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Apr 25.5 °C 24 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
23 Apr 25.3 °C 31 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Apr 26.1 °C 20 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Apr 25.4 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Apr 24.8 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Apr 23.9 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
28 Apr after 23.7 °C 30 % 54 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
29 Apr after 22.8 °C 31 % 61 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
30 Apr after 22.0 °C 24 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 May after 23.5 °C 26 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 May after 22.4 °C 33 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 May after 23.3 °C 35 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 May after 26.2 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
5 May after 25.0 °C 43 % 43 km/h 15.1 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Apr 2018
After · 4 May 2018

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 · 245Every 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 Tepehuanes fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 April 2018 and 27 April 2018: 16 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 3,867 hectares (38.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tepehuanes (3,310 ha, 0.5 %); Topia (571 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 245 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 2,006 official ha against 3,867 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.