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Yécora fire, 6 May 2021 Yécora, Moris

Out · last detection 18 May 2021, 19:58 UTC

The fire started on 6 May 2021 in Yécora, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,466 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Sonora since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 29 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moris · 2024Yécora · 2025Yécora · 2017Uruachi · 2017

Burnt area
6,466ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
6 May 2021 – 18 May 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 May
2021
Heat detections
431
in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
296MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 May18 May
18 May 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 May 2021 · 82 MW · 3 7 May 2021 · 303 MW · 19 8 May 2021 · 340 MW · 33 9 May 2021 · 1,544 MW · 160 10 May 2021 · 934 MW · 117 11 May 2021 · 168 MW · 49 13 May 2021 · 5 MW · 5 14 May 2021 · 47 MW · 8 15 May 2021 · 8 MW · 6 16 May 2021 · 15 MW · 6 17 May 2021 · 83 MW · 17 18 May 2021 · 29 MW · 8
6 May 8 May 9 May 10 May 13 May 15 May 17 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

30°high
57km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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. Yécora where it started
    5,183 ha reached on 6 May
    1.9 %
  2. Moris
    1,302 ha reached on 9 May
    0.7 %

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 area0.51 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.51 hectares of 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

Several official records match this area

According to CONAFOR, 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 4,732 ha (the satellite measured 6,466 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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 3,989 ha 2 670 ha 3 73 ha
6 May18 May
cause unknown or not published
  1. 1 Yécora El Trigo 6 May 2021 3,989 ha · extinguished on 19 May 2021 · cause: unknown
  2. 2 Moris Ej. Talayotes, P.P. Puerto del Toro, Los Laureles, La Republica 9 May 2021 670 ha · extinguished on 19 May 2021 · cause: unknown
  3. 3 Yécora Llano San Miguel 12 May 2021 73 ha · extinguished on 15 May 2021 · cause: unknown

Total according to CONAFOR: 4,732 ha, 73 % of the 6,466 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)
6 May 29.7 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 May 29.7 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 May 27.7 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 May 27.5 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 May 27.8 °C 32 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 May 28.6 °C 27 % 49 km/h 4.9 mm Low 8
12 May 29.1 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 15
13 May 29.0 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 May 29.2 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 May 26.7 °C 29 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 May 28.0 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 May 26.1 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 May 26.0 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 May after 28.1 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 May after 29.4 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 May after 26.8 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 May after 28.9 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 May after 29.2 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 May after 28.7 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 May after 29.8 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 May after 30.3 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 May after 29.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 May after 31.5 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Apr 2021
After · 25 May 2021

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 · 431Every 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 Yécora fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 May 2021 and 18 May 2021: 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 6,466 hectares (64.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yécora (5,183 ha, 1.9 %); Moris (1,302 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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. 431 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 4,732 official ha against 6,466 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.