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MM · Myanmar · →

Ann fire, 10 April 2023 Ann

Out · last detection 23 Apr 2023, 20:17 UTC

The fire started on 10 April 2023 in Ann, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,416 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Rakhine since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 98 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…
Burnt area
3,416ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
10 Apr 2023 – 22 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Apr
2023
Heat detections
144
in a single hotspot: 159 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
144MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Apr22 Apr
23 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Apr 2023 · 532 MW · 16 11 Apr 2023 · 89 MW · 17 12 Apr 2023 · 145 MW · 17 13 Apr 2023 · 120 MW · 9 14 Apr 2023 · 430 MW · 11 15 Apr 2023 · 118 MW · 9 16 Apr 2023 · 133 MW · 11 17 Apr 2023 · 25 MW · 4 18 Apr 2023 · 95 MW · 7 19 Apr 2023 · 51 MW · 8 20 Apr 2023 · 257 MW · 14 21 Apr 2023 · 1 MW · 1 22 Apr 2023 · 16 MW · 2 23 Apr 2023 · 5 MW · 3
10 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 18 Apr 20 Apr 22 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
44km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 448 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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. Ann where it started
    3,438 ha
    0.6 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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

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)
10 Apr 38.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Apr 37.4 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Apr 38.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Apr 36.5 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Apr 36.8 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Apr 37.0 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Apr 34.2 °C 60 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
17 Apr 35.6 °C 59 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
18 Apr 36.5 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Apr 35.9 °C 56 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Apr 36.9 °C 54 % 36 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 19
21 Apr 35.0 °C 57 % 38 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16
22 Apr 37.2 °C 42 % 36 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 21
23 Apr after 37.2 °C 45 % 30 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
24 Apr after 36.8 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
25 Apr after 38.6 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
26 Apr after 39.3 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Apr after 38.4 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
28 Apr after 38.0 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
29 Apr after 39.1 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
30 Apr after 38.2 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
1 May after 37.5 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
2 May after 36.0 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Apr 2023
After · 29 Apr 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 9 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 426 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 210: 14 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak426 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10609 µg/m³
Optical depth2.59
8910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 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 Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ann fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 April 2023 and 22 April 2023: 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 3,416 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ann (3,438 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Myanmar (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.

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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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.
  • 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 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 ADM3 (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.