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Zirándaro fire, 15 April 2023 Zirándaro

Out · last detection 24 Apr 2023, 19:20 UTC

The fire started on 15 April 2023 in Zirándaro, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 15 April 2023 and declared extinguished on 1 May 2023.

It is the 152th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 66 in Mexico in 2023, of 285.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zirándaro · 2021Zirándaro · 2019Coyuca de Catalán · 2019Coyuca de Catalán · 2024

Burnt area
4,039ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
15 Apr 2023 – 30 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Apr
2023
Heat detections
165
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
102MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Apr30 Apr
24 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Apr 2023 · 238 MW · 24 16 Apr 2023 · 249 MW · 35 17 Apr 2023 · 150 MW · 42 18 Apr 2023 · 66 MW · 15 19 Apr 2023 · 212 MW · 26 20 Apr 2023 · 69 MW · 14 21 Apr 2023 · 14 MW · 3 22 Apr 2023 · 1 MW · 1 23 Apr 2023 · 14 MW · 3 24 Apr 2023 · 4 MW · 2
15 Apr 16 Apr 17 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
37km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 4 May.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,208 ha in 2017, 1,562 ha in 2019, 3,960 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,960 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (40 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. Zirándaro where it started
    4,059 ha reached on 15 Apr
    1.9 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.10 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 15 April 2023 and burned 3,504 ha (the satellite measured 4,039 ha).

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)
15 Apr 36.1 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Apr 37.8 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
17 Apr 34.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Apr 34.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Apr 35.9 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr 36.8 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Apr 37.9 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
22 Apr 37.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 2.1 mm High 26
23 Apr 35.2 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Apr 34.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Apr 35.6 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Apr 36.2 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Apr 35.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Apr 35.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Apr 36.2 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Apr 34.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 May after 35.1 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 May after 35.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 May after 36.4 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 May after 36.0 °C 26 % 31 km/h 2.0 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Apr 2023
After · 7 May 2023

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 17 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.55
131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 165Every 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 Zirándaro fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 April 2023 to 30 April 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 April 2023 to 24 April 2023. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 15 April 2023 and declared extinguished on 1 May 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,039 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zirándaro (4,059 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 April 2023 to 24 April 2023. 165 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with CONAFOR: 3,504 official ha against 4,039 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 2025, 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.