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Ann fire, 12 April 2023 Ann

Out · last detection 11 May 2023, 07:10 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2023 in Ann, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Rakhine since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 8 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ann · 2021Ann · 2023Ann · 2023Ann · 2023

Burnt area
18,084ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
12 Apr 2023 – 10 May 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Apr
2023
Heat detections
1,034
in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
416MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr10 May
11 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 2023 · 136 MW · 11 13 Apr 2023 · 91 MW · 3 14 Apr 2023 · 127 MW · 7 15 Apr 2023 · 59 MW · 8 16 Apr 2023 · 29 MW · 5 17 Apr 2023 · 50 MW · 9 18 Apr 2023 · 665 MW · 26 19 Apr 2023 · 210 MW · 18 20 Apr 2023 · 314 MW · 24 21 Apr 2023 · 22 MW · 7 22 Apr 2023 · 612 MW · 30 23 Apr 2023 · 133 MW · 12 24 Apr 2023 · 837 MW · 24 25 Apr 2023 · 908 MW · 86 26 Apr 2023 · 925 MW · 93 27 Apr 2023 · 568 MW · 48 28 Apr 2023 · 210 MW · 33 29 Apr 2023 · 369 MW · 27 30 Apr 2023 · 1,320 MW · 65 1 May 2023 · 76 MW · 12 3 May 2023 · 34 MW · 14 4 May 2023 · 552 MW · 77 5 May 2023 · 1,917 MW · 105 6 May 2023 · 1,335 MW · 96 7 May 2023 · 261 MW · 26 8 May 2023 · 53 MW · 8 9 May 2023 · 5 MW · 2 10 May 2023 · 236 MW · 7 11 May 2023 · 2 MW · 1
12 Apr 17 Apr 22 Apr 27 Apr 3 May 5 May 8 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

41°high
48km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.4 mm on 12 May.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16 ha in 2019, 3,530 ha in 2020, 229 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (181 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
    18,194 ha
    2.9 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
12 Apr 38.7 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Apr 37.0 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Apr 38.1 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr 38.0 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Apr 35.0 °C 55 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Apr 36.3 °C 56 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 20
18 Apr 36.9 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
19 Apr 35.9 °C 55 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
20 Apr 37.1 °C 54 % 38 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 18
21 Apr 35.2 °C 59 % 39 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 12
22 Apr 37.4 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
23 Apr 37.3 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Apr 37.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
25 Apr 39.2 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Apr 39.9 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Apr 38.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
28 Apr 38.2 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
29 Apr 39.9 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Apr 39.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
1 May 38.3 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 May 36.6 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
3 May 37.8 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
4 May 37.9 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 May 38.6 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 May 38.4 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 May 39.0 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
8 May 40.7 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 May 36.9 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
10 May 38.8 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
11 May after 38.8 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 May after 35.2 °C 52 % 23 km/h 17.4 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Apr 2023
After · 17 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.

Detections table · 1,034Every 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 12 April 2023 and 10 May 2023: 29 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 18,084 hectares (180.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ann (18,194 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 48 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

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,034 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.

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.