How long did the Hot fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2020 and 18 January 2020: 10 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 1,974 hectares (19.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hot (1,984 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

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 · 2020-01-09 → 2020-01-18

Hot fire, 9 January 2020 Hot

Out · last detection 18 Jan 2020, 19:06 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2020 in Hot, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,974 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 157th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 463 with a page). Number 248 in Thailand in 2020, of 666.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 1,974ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 9 Jan 2020 – 18 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 9 Jan; 2020
Heat detections: 60; in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Energy released: 121MW; sum of detected power

Play back 18 Jan 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan18 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

9101112131415161718

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

31km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 453 ha in 2016, 894 ha in 2017, 1,364 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,686 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Hot where it started

1,984 ha reached on 6 Jan

1.3 %

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)
2 Jan	30.2 °C	52 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
3 Jan	31.0 °C	49 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
4 Jan	31.8 °C	48 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
5 Jan	32.2 °C	51 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 12
6 Jan	33.1 °C	45 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
7 Jan	33.1 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
8 Jan	32.3 °C	47 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Jan	33.4 °C	41 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
10 Jan	33.8 °C	39 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
11 Jan	33.5 °C	30 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
12 Jan	32.2 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
13 Jan	32.8 °C	43 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
14 Jan	33.6 °C	38 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
15 Jan	33.5 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
16 Jan	33.6 °C	37 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
17 Jan	33.4 °C	40 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Jan	33.9 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
19 Jan after	34.0 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
20 Jan after	33.8 °C	36 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
21 Jan after	33.9 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Jan after	35.2 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
23 Jan after	34.5 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Jan after	33.3 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Jan after	32.3 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Jan after	31.0 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
27 Jan after	30.8 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
28 Jan after	31.4 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Jan 2020

After · 25 Jan 2020

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 · 60Every 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 Hot fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2020 and 18 January 2020: 10 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 1,974 hectares (19.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hot (1,984 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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