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MM · Myanmar · –

Mese fire, 8 March 2026 Bawlake, Mese, Shadaw

Out · last detection 25 Apr 2026, 06:26 UTC

The fire started on 8 March 2026 in Mese, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 48 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 108,448 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

Number 2 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mese · 2024Mese · 2025Bawlake · 2021Bawlake · 2023

Burnt area
108,448ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
48days
8 Mar 2026 – 24 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
8 Mar
2026
Heat detections
4,033
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
328MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Mar24 Apr
25 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Mar 2026 · 258 MW · 45 9 Mar 2026 · 336 MW · 53 10 Mar 2026 · 140 MW · 22 13 Mar 2026 · 5 MW · 1 15 Mar 2026 · 14 MW · 2 16 Mar 2026 · 13 MW · 2 17 Mar 2026 · 60 MW · 23 18 Mar 2026 · 347 MW · 106 19 Mar 2026 · 112 MW · 43 20 Mar 2026 · 50 MW · 11 21 Mar 2026 · 124 MW · 32 22 Mar 2026 · 756 MW · 129 23 Mar 2026 · 1,342 MW · 369 24 Mar 2026 · 686 MW · 176 25 Mar 2026 · 537 MW · 130 26 Mar 2026 · 449 MW · 130 27 Mar 2026 · 762 MW · 176 28 Mar 2026 · 1,547 MW · 432 29 Mar 2026 · 1,086 MW · 356 30 Mar 2026 · 589 MW · 139 31 Mar 2026 · 349 MW · 69 1 Apr 2026 · 590 MW · 128 2 Apr 2026 · 979 MW · 299 3 Apr 2026 · 410 MW · 152 4 Apr 2026 · 122 MW · 32 5 Apr 2026 · 136 MW · 23 6 Apr 2026 · 104 MW · 18 7 Apr 2026 · 255 MW · 50 8 Apr 2026 · 429 MW · 150 9 Apr 2026 · 390 MW · 116 10 Apr 2026 · 110 MW · 66 11 Apr 2026 · 316 MW · 98 12 Apr 2026 · 467 MW · 109 13 Apr 2026 · 622 MW · 138 14 Apr 2026 · 159 MW · 64 15 Apr 2026 · 32 MW · 13 16 Apr 2026 · 24 MW · 10 17 Apr 2026 · 100 MW · 19 18 Apr 2026 · 143 MW · 54 19 Apr 2026 · 69 MW · 24 20 Apr 2026 · 12 MW · 4 21 Apr 2026 · 1 MW · 1 22 Apr 2026 · 5 MW · 4 23 Apr 2026 · 18 MW · 5 24 Apr 2026 · 15 MW · 9 25 Apr 2026 · 7 MW · 1
8 Mar 21 Mar 28 Mar 10 Apr 20 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (95 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

39°high
40km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 25 Apr.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 44,851 ha in 2016, 40,857 ha in 2017, 36,365 ha in 2018, 41,600 ha in 2019, 58,542 ha in 2020, 52,817 ha in 2021, 18,177 ha in 2022, 40,175 ha in 2023, 48,070 ha in 2024, 46,003 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 102,778 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 68% of the area of London (1,084 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. Bawlake
    54,201 ha reached on 8 Mar
    28 %
  2. Mese where it started
    37,256 ha reached on 8 Mar
    20 %
  3. Shadaw
    13,523 ha reached on 17 Mar
    6.2 %
  4. Hpasawng
    616 ha reached on 26 Mar
    0.4 %

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 area2.2 ha
Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.2 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (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)
8 Mar 35.7 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 Mar 35.7 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
10 Mar 33.8 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
11 Mar 31.7 °C 47 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 14
12 Mar 32.4 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
13 Mar 30.1 °C 56 % 26 km/h 3.7 mm Moderate 14
14 Mar 30.9 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 4
15 Mar 32.3 °C 52 % 25 km/h 0.5 mm Low 10
16 Mar 32.9 °C 49 % 26 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 15
17 Mar 33.8 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Mar 35.0 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Mar 35.3 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Mar 34.0 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
21 Mar 35.7 °C 43 % 32 km/h 1.0 mm High 25
22 Mar 35.7 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
23 Mar 35.6 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Mar 36.1 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Mar 36.2 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Mar 36.9 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Mar 37.5 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Mar 38.1 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Mar 38.3 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Mar 38.1 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Mar 38.6 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Apr 38.5 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Apr 38.8 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Apr 39.0 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Apr 37.9 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Apr 38.0 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Apr 37.6 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
7 Apr 35.9 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
8 Apr 37.9 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Apr 36.8 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Apr 37.3 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Apr 37.7 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Apr 38.2 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Apr 38.5 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 37.9 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Apr 37.8 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
16 Apr 37.3 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Apr 38.4 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Apr 37.4 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.7 mm High 34
19 Apr 37.8 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Apr 37.1 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Apr 38.4 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
22 Apr 39.0 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Apr 37.6 °C 41 % 33 km/h 1.8 mm High 29
24 Apr 38.1 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
25 Apr after 35.4 °C 50 % 30 km/h 3.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Mar 2026
After · 1 May 2026

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 3 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 155 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 84: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak155 µg/m³
Days over the guideline39 days
PM10164 µg/m³
Optical depth1.37
13 Mar22 Mar31 Mar9 Apr18 Apr
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 · 4,033Every 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 Mese fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 March 2026 to 24 April 2026 (48 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2026 to 19 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 108,448 hectares (1,084.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Bawlake (54,201 ha, 28 %); Mese (37,256 ha, 20 %); Shadaw (13,523 ha, 6.2 %); Hpasawng (616 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 15 March 2026 → 8 March 2026.
  2. Last day with fire: 19 April 2026 → 24 April 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 8 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 March 2026 to 19 April 2026. 4,033 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.