Skip to content
worldfires
en
TH · Thailand · →

Mueang Lop Buri fire, April 2026 เมืองลพบุรี · Don Phut, Mueang Lop Buri, Nong Don

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2026, 07:21 UTC

The fire started on 13 April 2026 in Mueang Lop Buri, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,127 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Lopburi Province since 2016 (of 10 with a page). Number 285 in Thailand in 2026, of 689.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.8 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: Ban Mo · 2026

Burnt area
2,127ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
13 Apr 2026 – 21 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
13 Apr
2026
Heat detections
61
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
41MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Apr21 Apr
22 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Apr 2026 · 6 MW · 1 14 Apr 2026 · 7 MW · 1 15 Apr 2026 · 149 MW · 19 16 Apr 2026 · 48 MW · 5 17 Apr 2026 · 108 MW · 20 18 Apr 2026 · 19 MW · 4 20 Apr 2026 · 13 MW · 2 21 Apr 2026 · 20 MW · 2 22 Apr 2026 · 3 MW · 2
13 Apr 15 Apr 17 Apr 20 Apr 22 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

42°high
37km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 25 Apr.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 181 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Don Phut ดอนพุด
    1,469 ha
    26 %
  2. Mueang Lop Buri เมืองลพบุรี where it started
    596 ha
    0.8 %
  3. Nong Don หนองโดน
    75 ha
    0.8 %
  4. Ban Phraek บ้านแพรก
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 area11 ha
Residents≈ 800

Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 800 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)
4 Apr 39.5 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Apr 40.1 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Apr 40.1 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Apr 40.2 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Apr 40.6 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Apr 40.5 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Apr 40.4 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Apr 40.8 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Apr 40.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Apr 40.7 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Apr 41.5 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Apr 41.0 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
16 Apr 40.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
17 Apr 40.0 °C 35 % 33 km/h 1.8 mm High 29
18 Apr 40.8 °C 33 % 31 km/h 1.5 mm High 31
19 Apr 39.6 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
20 Apr 40.6 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Apr 39.5 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
22 Apr after 40.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 41
23 Apr after 39.1 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
24 Apr after 37.8 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
25 Apr after 36.0 °C 50 % 31 km/h 4.8 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Apr 2026
After · 28 Apr 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 17 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³
Days over the guideline23 days
PM1063 µg/m³
Optical depth1.18
23456789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 61Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mueang Lop Buri fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 April 2026 and 21 April 2026: 9 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 2,127 hectares (21.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Don Phut (1,469 ha, 26 %); Mueang Lop Buri (596 ha, 0.8 %); Nong Don (75 ha, 0.8 %); Ban Phraek (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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. 61 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.