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Valparaíso fire, 11 May 2022 Valparaíso

Out · last detection 22 May 2022, 08:24 UTC

The fire started on 11 May 2022 in Valparaíso, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,767 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Zacatecas since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 88 in Mexico in 2022, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Valparaíso · 2016Valparaíso · 2017Valparaíso · 2024Valparaíso · 2017

Burnt area
2,767ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
11 May 2022 – 22 May 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 May
2022
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
106MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 May22 May
22 May 2022

How it evolved, day by day

12 May 2022 · 41 MW · 8 13 May 2022 · 182 MW · 13 14 May 2022 · 109 MW · 11 15 May 2022 · 12 MW · 6 16 May 2022 · 1 MW · 1 17 May 2022 · 11 MW · 5 18 May 2022 · 285 MW · 42 19 May 2022 · 142 MW · 13 20 May 2022 · 312 MW · 29 21 May 2022 · 71 MW · 15 22 May 2022 · 2 MW · 1
12 May 14 May 16 May 18 May 20 May 22 May

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
55km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 1 Jun.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,671 ha in 2016, 2,008 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,717 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (28 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. Valparaíso where it started
    2,783 ha reached on 12 May
    0.5 %

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 11 May 2022 and burned 1,871 ha (the satellite measured 2,767 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)
11 May 29.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 1.3 mm High 27
12 May 31.4 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 May 29.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 1.6 mm High 27
14 May 29.7 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
15 May 30.6 °C 13 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 May 30.2 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 40
17 May 28.3 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 May 29.0 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 May 29.9 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 May 27.0 °C 22 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 May 27.4 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 May 29.3 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 May after 27.3 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 May after 27.3 °C 13 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 May after 29.9 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 May after 30.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 47
27 May after 30.9 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 May after 29.1 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 May after 28.9 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 38
30 May after 28.8 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 May after 29.5 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
1 Jun after 28.8 °C 29 % 31 km/h 4.2 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 May 2022
After · 29 May 2022

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 · 144Every 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 Valparaíso fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 May 2022 and 22 May 2022: 12 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 2,767 hectares (27.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Valparaíso (2,783 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 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. 144 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 1,871 official ha against 2,767 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.