How long did the Chure fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 April 2019 and 14 May 2019: 15 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 14,029 hectares (140.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 6 municipalities: Godawari (7,572 ha, 25 %); Krishnapur (2,786 ha, 11 %); Chure (2,723 ha, 5.5 %); Parashuram (556 ha, 1.3 %); Alital (396 ha, 1.4 %); Shuklaphanta (55 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

NP · Nepal · 2019-04-30 → 2019-05-14

Chure fire, April 2019 Godawari, Krishnapur, Chure

Out · last detection 15 May 2019, 19:54 UTC

The fire started on 30 April 2019 in Chure, Nepal, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,029 hectares from heat detections, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Sudurpaschim since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 2 in Nepal in 2019, of 25.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jorayal · 2016 Godawari · 2016 Godawari · 2016 Chure · 2016

Burnt area: 14,029ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 30 Apr 2019 – 14 May 2019
Municipalities hit: 6; municipalities
Started on: 30 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 819; in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 162MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Apr14 May

Play back 15 May 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Apr 3 May 6 May 8 May 9 May 12 May 15 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

35°high

52km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10,875 ha in 2016, 271 ha in 2017, 155 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,408 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.9% of the area of London (140 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

Godawari

7,572 ha

25 %
Krishnapur

2,786 ha

11 %
Chure where it started

2,723 ha

5.5 %
Parashuram

556 ha

1.3 %
Alital

396 ha

1.4 %
Shuklaphanta

55 ha

0.3 %

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 2020

Built-up area17 ha

Residents≈ 4,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 17 hectares of built-up land and about 4,500 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
23 Apr	28.4 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
24 Apr	28.9 °C	47 %	27 km/h	0.8 mm	Low 10
25 Apr	30.2 °C	46 %	35 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 3
26 Apr	31.9 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
27 Apr	32.2 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
28 Apr	32.3 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
29 Apr	32.4 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
30 Apr	33.2 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
1 May	33.1 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 May	33.4 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
3 May	28.3 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
4 May	31.1 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 May	32.0 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 May	33.2 °C	15 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
7 May	34.2 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 May	34.8 °C	16 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 May	35.1 °C	15 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 May	34.4 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 May	34.1 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 May	32.4 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
13 May	32.6 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 May	28.8 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.8 mm	High 24
15 May after	29.5 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 May after	30.9 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.8 mm	High 26
17 May after	31.9 °C	25 %	50 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
18 May after	29.3 °C	32 %	38 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 10
19 May after	31.9 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 May after	33.5 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 May after	34.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 May after	33.5 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
23 May after	33.9 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 May after	32.0 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
25 May after	32.8 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 May after	32.9 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 May after	35.2 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 May after	34.4 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 May after	33.8 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 May after	33.7 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 May after	33.0 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Apr 2019

After · 21 May 2019

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 · 819Every 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 Nepal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chure fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 April 2019 and 14 May 2019: 15 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 14,029 hectares (140.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 6 municipalities: Godawari (7,572 ha, 25 %); Krishnapur (2,786 ha, 11 %); Chure (2,723 ha, 5.5 %); Parashuram (556 ha, 1.3 %); Alital (396 ha, 1.4 %); Shuklaphanta (55 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (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: 101 · 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?

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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 101.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 819 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 2020, 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-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). 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