How long did the Tumbiscatío fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 April 2023 and 19 April 2023: 6 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 1,707 hectares (17.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tumbiscatío (1,715 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2023-04-14 → 2023-04-19

Tumbiscatío fire, April 2023 Tumbiscatío

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2023, 20:54 UTC

The fire started on 14 April 2023 in Tumbiscatío, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,707 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 238 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tumbiscatío · 2024 Tumbiscatío · 2021 Aguililla · 2024 Tumbiscatío · 2020

Burnt area: 1,707ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 14 Apr 2023 – 19 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 14 Apr; 2023
Heat detections: 81; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 133MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Apr19 Apr

Play back 19 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Apr 15 Apr 16 Apr 17 Apr 18 Apr 19 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

29°high

44km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 21 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

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

Tumbiscatío where it started

1,715 ha

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 2025

Built-up area0.15 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 April 2023 and burned 781 ha (the satellite measured 1,707 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Tumbiscatío Apo Nuevo 16 April 2023 781 ha · extinguished on 20 April 2023 · cause: unknown

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)
14 Apr	28.7 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
15 Apr	29.4 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
16 Apr	28.7 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.7 mm	High 23
17 Apr	27.3 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
18 Apr	27.8 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	High 25
19 Apr	27.2 °C	45 %	35 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
20 Apr after	28.2 °C	45 %	35 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 20
21 Apr after	28.8 °C	44 %	32 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Apr 2023

After · 26 Apr 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 49 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak49 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM1070 µg/m³

Optical depth0.59

WHO 15

1213141516171819202122

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 81Every 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 14 April 2023 and 19 April 2023: 6 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 1,707 hectares (17.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tumbiscatío (1,715 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 81 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 781 official ha against 1,707 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned