Hoon fire, March 2026 Hoon
The fire started on 28 March 2026 in Hoon, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,083 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 57th largest in Oudomxay since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 92 in Laos in 2026, of 308.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Hoon · 2024Hoon · 2020Hoon · 2023Hoon · 2017
- Burnt area
- 5,083ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 25days
- 28 Mar 2026 – 21 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 167
- in a single hotspot: 271 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 138MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 24 Apr.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 326 ha in 2016, 1,520 ha in 2017, 430 ha in 2018, 1,654 ha in 2019, 3,420 ha in 2020, 1,247 ha in 2021, 1,363 ha in 2022, 1,815 ha in 2023, 2,203 ha in 2024, 268 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,693 ha that had burned before.
- 1,757 ha Hoon fire, March 2024 2,229 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,546 ha Hoon fire, March 2020 3,205 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,448 ha Hoon fire, March 2023 2,177 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,362 ha Hoon fire, April 2017 5,143 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,247 ha Hoon fire, March 2021 2,904 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,000 ha Hoon fire, March 2019 5,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 977 ha Hoon fire, March 2020 2,061 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 326 ha Hoon fire, March 2016 2,164 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 started5,108 ha2.4 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Mar | 33.3 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 29 Mar | 31.7 °C | 32 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 30 Mar | 32.1 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 31 Mar | 32.3 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 1 Apr | 32.0 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 2 Apr | 32.5 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 3 Apr | 33.4 °C | 33 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Apr | 32.9 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Apr | 32.8 °C | 38 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Apr | 32.7 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Apr | 32.8 °C | 39 % | 39 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Apr | 33.3 °C | 33 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 9 Apr | 32.9 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Apr | 32.5 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Apr | 32.7 °C | 31 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Apr | 33.5 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Apr | 34.1 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Apr | 33.8 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Apr | 34.4 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 16 Apr | 34.9 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Apr | 33.4 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Apr | 32.2 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 19 Apr | 32.9 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 21 |
| 20 Apr | 30.8 °C | 50 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 21 Apr | 33.6 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Apr after | 34.3 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Apr after | 30.9 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 24 Apr after | 32.0 °C | 43 % | 28 km/h | 2.4 mm | Low 9 |
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 18 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 234 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 175: 12 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 · 167Every 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 28 March 2026 to 21 April 2026 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 April 2026 to 16 April 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,083 hectares (50.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Hoon (5,108 ha, 2.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 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 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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 April 2026 to 16 April 2026. 167 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.