How long did the Zirándaro fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 April 2021 to 24 April 2021 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 April 2021 to 23 April 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,106 hectares (91.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zirándaro (9,156 ha, 4.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.

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 · 2021-04-11 → 2021-04-24

Zirándaro fire, 11 April 2021 Zirándaro

Out · last detection 24 Apr 2021, 19:04 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2021 in Zirándaro, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,106 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 13 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zirándaro · 2020 Zirándaro · 2016 Zirándaro · 2017 Coyuca de Catalán · 2021

Burnt area: 9,106ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 11 Apr 2021 – 24 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 11 Apr; 2021
Heat detections: 447; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 166MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr24 Apr

Play back 24 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

11 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 17 Apr 18 Apr 19 Apr 21 Apr 23 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

38°high

50km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 140 ha in 2016, 296 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (91 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

Zirándaro where it started

9,156 ha reached on 11 Apr

4.2 %

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 area2.3 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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

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)
11 Apr	36.6 °C	16 %	34 km/h	Very high 47
12 Apr	36.1 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Very high 48
13 Apr	37.2 °C	13 %	31 km/h	Very high 46
14 Apr	36.4 °C	20 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
15 Apr	37.7 °C	8 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
16 Apr	37.4 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 56
17 Apr	36.3 °C	13 %	50 km/h	Extreme 57
18 Apr	35.1 °C	8 %	35 km/h	Extreme 50
19 Apr	34.7 °C	11 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
20 Apr	34.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
21 Apr	35.8 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Very high 46
22 Apr	34.6 °C	17 %	30 km/h	Very high 45
23 Apr	35.5 °C	18 %	32 km/h	Very high 46
24 Apr	35.1 °C	20 %	38 km/h	Very high 46
25 Apr after	36.1 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Very high 48
26 Apr after	36.7 °C	16 %	39 km/h	Extreme 51
27 Apr after	36.9 °C	17 %	38 km/h	Very high 47
28 Apr after	35.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	Very high 46
29 Apr after	34.9 °C	22 %	38 km/h	Very high 49
30 Apr after	35.0 °C	23 %	32 km/h	Very high 42
1 May after	34.9 °C	22 %	39 km/h	Very high 45
2 May after	34.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	Very high 43
3 May after	34.1 °C	22 %	39 km/h	Very high 44
4 May after	33.9 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Apr 2021

After · 1 May 2021

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.

Detections table · 447Every 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 Zirándaro fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 April 2021 to 24 April 2021 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 April 2021 to 23 April 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,106 hectares (91.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zirándaro (9,156 ha, 4.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
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.

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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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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 11 April 2021 to 23 April 2021. 447 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.

Where it burned