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Tijuana fire, 16 September 2020 Playas de Rosarito, Tijuana

Out · last detection 18 Sept 2020, 20:38 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2020 in Tijuana, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,181 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 37th largest in Baja California since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 136 in Mexico in 2020, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tijuana · 2017Playas de Rosarito · 2017Ensenada · 2019Tecate · 2019

Burnt area
2,181ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
16 Sept 2020 – 18 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Sept
2020
Heat detections
59
in a single hotspot: 139 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
491MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept18 Sept
18 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2020 · 360 MW · 10 17 Sept 2020 · 685 MW · 43 18 Sept 2020 · 427 MW · 6
16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
43km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 502 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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. Playas de Rosarito 126,890 inhabitants
    1,139 ha reached on 17 Sept
    2.3 %
  2. Tijuana 1,922,523 inhabitants where it started
    1,049 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.8 %

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 area5.2 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.2 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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 16 September 2020 and burned 5,341 ha (the satellite measured 2,181 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)
16 Sept 34.3 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Sept 34.9 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept 33.5 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Sept after 30.2 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept after 27.2 °C 49 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Sept after 26.6 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Sept after 28.5 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept after 29.9 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Sept after 29.4 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Sept after 24.8 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Sept after 25.3 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Sept after 24.2 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Sept after 29.4 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2020
After · 25 Sept 2020

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 · 59Every 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 Tijuana fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2020 and 18 September 2020: 3 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 2,181 hectares (21.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Playas de Rosarito (1,139 ha, 2.3 %); Tijuana (1,049 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 ›

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. 59 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 5,341 official ha against 2,181 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.