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Villa Corzo fire, 8 May 2022 Villa Corzo

Out · last detection 22 May 2022, 19:35 UTC

The fire started on 8 May 2022 in Villa Corzo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,670 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, the largest of the 4 recorded fires was detected on 14 May 2022 and declared extinguished on 18 May 2022.

It is the 89th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 95 in Mexico in 2022, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villa Corzo · 2018Villa Corzo · 2019Villa Corzo · 2019Villa Corzo · 2024

Burnt area
2,670ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
8 May 2022 – 23 May 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 May
2022
Heat detections
106
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
57MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 May23 May
22 May 2022

How it evolved, day by day

8 May 2022 · 90 MW · 11 9 May 2022 · 10 MW · 4 12 May 2022 · 43 MW · 4 13 May 2022 · 1 MW · 1 14 May 2022 · 72 MW · 6 15 May 2022 · 76 MW · 9 16 May 2022 · 134 MW · 35 18 May 2022 · 142 MW · 11 19 May 2022 · 7 MW · 4 20 May 2022 · 63 MW · 11 21 May 2022 · 11 MW · 1 22 May 2022 · 39 MW · 9
8 May 12 May 14 May 16 May 18 May 19 May 21 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

32°high
38km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 24 May.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,368 ha in 2018, 179 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,470 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Villa Corzo where it started
    2,684 ha reached on 8 May
    1.0 %

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 area1.3 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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

Complex of 4 fires according to CONAFOR

According to CONAFOR, 4 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 2,503 ha (the satellite measured 2,670 ha).

CONAFOR records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 140 ha 2 761 ha 3 1,167 ha 4 434 ha
9 May22 May
cause unknown or not published
  1. 1 Villa Corzo Peje de Oro 9 May 2022 140 ha · extinguished on 11 May 2022 · cause: unknown
  2. 2 Villa Corzo Monterrey 11 May 2022 761 ha · extinguished on 14 May 2022 · cause: unknown
  3. 3 Villa Corzo Berlin 14 May 2022 1,167 ha · extinguished on 18 May 2022 · cause: unknown
  4. 4 Villa Corzo Lázaro Cárdenas 20 May 2022 434 ha · extinguished on 23 May 2022 · cause: unknown

Total according to CONAFOR: 2,503 ha, 94 % of the 2,670 ha in the satellite perimeter.

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)
8 May 29.4 °C 54 % 36 km/h 1.8 mm Low 6
9 May 31.0 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
10 May 31.2 °C 45 % 33 km/h 9.6 mm Very low 1
11 May 31.3 °C 35 % 38 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 4
12 May 31.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
13 May 31.3 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
14 May 29.8 °C 38 % 24 km/h 1.3 mm Low 8
15 May 30.1 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
16 May 31.6 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
17 May 31.0 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 16
18 May 29.8 °C 47 % 30 km/h 1.5 mm Low 9
19 May 30.7 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
20 May 30.4 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
21 May 29.3 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
22 May 29.0 °C 46 % 34 km/h 11.0 mm Very low 2
23 May 30.0 °C 45 % 28 km/h 13.0 mm Very low 1
24 May after 27.9 °C 58 % 30 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 May 2022
After · 30 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 · 106Every 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 Villa Corzo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 May 2022 to 23 May 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 May 2022 to 22 May 2022. According to CONAFOR, the largest of the 4 recorded fires was detected on 14 May 2022 and declared extinguished on 18 May 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,670 hectares (26.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Villa Corzo (2,684 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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 · 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 May 2022 to 22 May 2022. 106 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 2,503 official ha against 2,670 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.