How long did the Chat Trakan fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2023 and 7 April 2023: 6 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 1,300 hectares (13.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chat Trakan (1,307 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TH · Thailand · 2023-04-02 → 2023-04-07

Chat Trakan fire, April 2023 ชาติตระการ · Chat Trakan

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2023, 06:07 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2023 in Chat Trakan, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,300 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Phitsanulok Province since 2016 (of 55 with a page). Number 240 in Thailand in 2023, of 369.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chat Trakan · 2026 Chat Trakan · 2026 Nam Pat · 2026 Nam Pat · 2026

Burnt area: 1,300ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 2 Apr 2023 – 7 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 2 Apr; 2023
Heat detections: 60; in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr7 Apr

Play back 7 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 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

33°high

42km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 16 Apr.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 77 ha in 2016, 214 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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

Chat Trakan ชาติตระการ where it started

1,307 ha

0.8 %

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)
26 Mar	32.5 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Mar	33.2 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
28 Mar	32.1 °C	41 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Mar	31.9 °C	42 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
30 Mar	31.9 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
31 Mar	31.4 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Apr	31.3 °C	47 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
2 Apr	32.3 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Apr	32.6 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Apr	32.4 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Apr	32.5 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Apr	33.3 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Apr	33.1 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Apr after	32.0 °C	47 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
9 Apr after	31.5 °C	54 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 22
10 Apr after	33.3 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Apr after	33.2 °C	44 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
12 Apr after	34.0 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Apr after	33.4 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Apr after	34.3 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
15 Apr after	34.6 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 Apr after	32.5 °C	54 %	30 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Mar 2023

After · 14 Apr 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 8 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 99 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak99 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10142 µg/m³

Optical depth2.22

WHO 15

3112345678910

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 · 60Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chat Trakan fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2023 and 7 April 2023: 6 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 1,300 hectares (13.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chat Trakan (1,307 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 199 · 191.

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. 60 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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