How long did the Tumbiscatío fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 May 2020 and 5 June 2020: 13 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 2,140 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tumbiscatío (1,843 ha, 0.9 %); Apatzingán (309 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 35 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.

MX · Mexico · 2020-05-24 → 2020-06-05

Tumbiscatío fire, 24 May 2020 Tumbiscatío, Apatzingán

Out · last detection 5 Jun 2020, 20:01 UTC

The fire started on 24 May 2020 in Tumbiscatío, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,140 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 54th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 140 in Mexico in 2020, of 243.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tumbiscatío · 2017 Tumbiscatío · 2021 Apatzingán · 2019 Tumbiscatío · 2024

Burnt area: 2,140ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 24 May 2020 – 5 Jun 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 24 May; 2020
Heat detections: 130; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 40MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 5 Jun 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 May5 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

24 May 26 May 28 May 30 May 1 Jun 3 Jun 4 Jun 5 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

30°high

35km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 7 Jun.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 421 ha in 2017.

421 ha Tumbiscatío fire, April 2017 2,733 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (21 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

Tumbiscatío where it started

1,843 ha

0.9 %
Apatzingán 126,191 inhabitants

309 ha

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
19 May	29.7 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 May	29.7 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 May	28.8 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
22 May	28.8 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 May	28.2 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
24 May	27.8 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 May	26.9 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 May	27.5 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 May	28.3 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 May	28.8 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 May	28.4 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 May	26.9 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 May	26.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
1 Jun	26.8 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.3 mm	High 31
2 Jun	27.7 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Jun	29.0 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Jun	29.3 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Jun	28.2 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Jun after	25.5 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
7 Jun after	24.9 °C	46 %	31 km/h	3.3 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 May 2020

After · 12 Jun 2020

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 · 130Every 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 Tumbiscatío fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 May 2020 and 5 June 2020: 13 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 2,140 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tumbiscatío (1,843 ha, 0.9 %); Apatzingán (309 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 35 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

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 130 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.

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