How long did the Tumbiscatío fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2024 and 14 March 2024: 11 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 3,117 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tumbiscatío (3,133 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

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 · 2024-03-04 → 2024-03-14

Tumbiscatío fire, 4 March 2024 Tumbiscatío

Out · last detection 14 Mar 2024, 19:24 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2024 in Tumbiscatío, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,117 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 103 in Mexico in 2024, of 289.

Burnt area: 3,117ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 4 Mar 2024 – 14 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 4 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 219; in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start: 14; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 109MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 14 Mar 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar14 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 6 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 12 Mar 14 Mar

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

40km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 160 ha in 2023.

What happened to each town

Tumbiscatío where it started

3,133 ha

1.5 %

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.

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 5 March 2024 and burned 2,030 ha (the satellite measured 3,117 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Tumbiscatío Agua de los Indios 5 March 2024 2,030 ha · extinguished on 18 March 2024 · 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	Danger (FWI)
4 Mar	24.7 °C	31 %	35 km/h	Moderate 14
5 Mar	24.2 °C	40 %	34 km/h	Moderate 15
6 Mar	24.3 °C	45 %	36 km/h	Moderate 14
7 Mar	24.1 °C	42 %	35 km/h	Moderate 15
8 Mar	24.5 °C	45 %	31 km/h	Moderate 14
9 Mar	24.3 °C	49 %	37 km/h	Moderate 14
10 Mar	23.7 °C	37 %	37 km/h	Moderate 15
11 Mar	24.7 °C	29 %	36 km/h	Moderate 17
12 Mar	25.6 °C	33 %	32 km/h	Moderate 16
13 Mar	25.7 °C	35 %	34 km/h	Moderate 16
14 Mar	26.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	Moderate 19
15 Mar after	26.3 °C	27 %	33 km/h	Moderate 19
16 Mar after	25.7 °C	37 %	36 km/h	Moderate 20
17 Mar after	26.4 °C	33 %	28 km/h	Moderate 19
18 Mar after	25.9 °C	38 %	31 km/h	Moderate 19
19 Mar after	26.9 °C	28 %	36 km/h	Moderate 21
20 Mar after	27.2 °C	20 %	38 km/h	High 25
21 Mar after	26.4 °C	38 %	37 km/h	High 22
22 Mar after	26.3 °C	38 %	34 km/h	Moderate 21
23 Mar after	26.2 °C	27 %	39 km/h	High 23
24 Mar after	24.2 °C	31 %	34 km/h	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Feb 2024

After · 21 Mar 2024

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 9 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1023 µg/m³

Optical depth0.22

WHO 15

234567891011121314151617

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 · 219Every 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 4 March 2024 and 14 March 2024: 11 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 3,117 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tumbiscatío (3,133 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
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.

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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.

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