How long did the Chiang Dao fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2016 to 24 March 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 March 2016 to 18 March 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,954 hectares (19.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chiang Dao (1,783 ha, 0.8 %); Phrao (181 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 · 2016-03-09 → 2016-03-24

Chiang Dao fire, 9 March 2016 เชียงดาว · Chiang Dao, Phrao

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2016, 06:12 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2016 in Chiang Dao, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,954 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 141th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 123 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chai Prakan · 2026 Phrao · 2026 Mae Suai · 2026 Phrao · 2026

Burnt area: 1,954ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 9 Mar 2016 – 24 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 9 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 65; in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 17MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar24 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

9 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 21 Mar 23 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

37km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (20 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

Chiang Dao เชียงดาว where it started

1,783 ha reached on 10 Mar

0.8 %
Phrao พร้าว

181 ha reached on 9 Mar

0.1 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.11 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
9 Mar	35.7 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Mar	35.7 °C	26 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
11 Mar	36.7 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Mar	35.6 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Mar	36.1 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Mar	36.4 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Mar	36.7 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Mar	36.4 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Mar	36.7 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Mar	36.1 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Mar	36.0 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Mar	36.2 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Mar	36.9 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Mar	36.5 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar	36.9 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Mar	36.1 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Mar after	32.5 °C	44 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Mar after	33.3 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Mar after	33.9 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Mar after	33.9 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Mar 2016

After · 31 Mar 2016

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.

Detections table · 65Every 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 Chiang Dao fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2016 to 24 March 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 March 2016 to 18 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,954 hectares (19.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Chiang Dao (1,783 ha, 0.8 %); Phrao (181 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 18 March 2016 → 24 March 2016.
26 October 2026 Start date: 14 March 2016 → 9 March 2016.

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

What really happened?

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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 199 · 191.

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 14 March 2016 to 18 March 2016. 65 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 2015, 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