Hoon fire, 26 February 2023 Hoon
The fire started on 26 February 2023 in Hoon, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,626 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 154th largest in Oudomxay since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 138 in Laos in 2023, of 239.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Hoon · 2020Hoon · 2019Hoon · 2018Hoon · 2017
- Burnt area
- 2,626ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 20days
- 26 Feb 2023 – 17 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 159
- in a single hotspot: 71 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 129MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,119 ha in 2017, 847 ha in 2018, 1,203 ha in 2019, 453 ha in 2020, 71 ha in 2021, 1,291 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,372 ha that had burned before.
- 453 ha Hoon fire, March 2020 7,948 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 320 ha Hoon fire, March 2019 5,120 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 300 ha Hoon fire, April 2018 4,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 113 ha Hoon fire, April 2017 6,343 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 51 ha Hoon fire, February 2019 2,021 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 39 ha Hoon fire, February 2021 3,050 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Hoon fire, March 2017 2,665 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Hoon where it started2,639 ha reached on 26 Feb1.3 %
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.
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 Feb | 23.6 °C | 41 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 27 Feb | 25.5 °C | 39 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 28 Feb | 28.7 °C | 35 % | 15 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 1 Mar | 30.9 °C | 30 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 2 Mar | 29.4 °C | 37 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Mar | 27.7 °C | 43 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 4 Mar | 25.8 °C | 49 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 5 Mar | 26.0 °C | 49 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 6 Mar | 28.9 °C | 41 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 7 Mar | 30.5 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 8 Mar | 31.4 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 9 Mar | 29.6 °C | 45 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 10 Mar | 30.5 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Mar | 31.7 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 12 Mar | 29.9 °C | 49 % | 24 km/h | 2.9 mm | Low 5 |
| 13 Mar | 22.8 °C | 66 % | 32 km/h | 1.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 14 Mar | 28.2 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 15 Mar | 31.1 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Mar | 27.2 °C | 50 % | 34 km/h | 1.7 mm | Low 6 |
| 17 Mar | 30.1 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 18 Mar after | 31.4 °C | 42 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 19 Mar after | 30.0 °C | 50 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 20 Mar after | 31.9 °C | 38 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 21 Mar after | 32.1 °C | 36 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Mar after | 33.1 °C | 28 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Mar after | 33.6 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 24 Mar after | 33.4 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Mar after | 33.3 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Mar after | 32.7 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Mar after | 32.4 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 14 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 146 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 90: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 159Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Hoon fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 February 2023 to 17 March 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2023 to 10 March 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,626 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Hoon (2,639 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Laos (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
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 1 March 2023 to 10 March 2023. 159 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.
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.