How long did the Hsipaw fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 January 2020 to 18 February 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 February 2020 to 11 February 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,634 hectares (66.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hsipaw (6,662 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

MM · Myanmar · 2020-01-28 → 2020-02-18

Hsipaw fire, 28 January 2020 Hsipaw

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2020, 06:55 UTC

The fire started on 28 January 2020 in Hsipaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,634 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 90th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 24 in Myanmar in 2020, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hsipaw · 2023 Hsipaw · 2026 Hsipaw · 2026 Hsipaw · 2026

Burnt area: 6,634ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 28 Jan 2020 – 18 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 28 Jan; 2020
Heat detections: 255; in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 95MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jan18 Feb

Play back 18 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jan 3 Feb 6 Feb 9 Feb 13 Feb 16 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

45km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,168 ha in 2016, 1,379 ha in 2017, 919 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,856 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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

Hsipaw where it started

6,662 ha reached on 29 Jan

1.3 %

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	Danger (FWI)
3 Feb	27.3 °C	28 %	33 km/h	Moderate 20
4 Feb	27.0 °C	24 %	22 km/h	Moderate 19
5 Feb	27.5 °C	22 %	32 km/h	High 22
6 Feb	27.3 °C	29 %	27 km/h	High 22
7 Feb	28.1 °C	31 %	29 km/h	High 22
8 Feb	28.9 °C	33 %	25 km/h	High 22
9 Feb	29.6 °C	32 %	36 km/h	High 25
10 Feb	28.8 °C	27 %	45 km/h	High 28
11 Feb	28.4 °C	33 %	35 km/h	High 24
12 Feb	27.7 °C	30 %	33 km/h	High 24
13 Feb	28.1 °C	28 %	33 km/h	High 25
14 Feb	27.8 °C	25 %	31 km/h	High 25
15 Feb	28.0 °C	29 %	31 km/h	High 26
16 Feb	28.8 °C	28 %	26 km/h	High 24
17 Feb	31.0 °C	28 %	25 km/h	High 25
18 Feb	30.8 °C	24 %	41 km/h	High 30
19 Feb after	31.1 °C	20 %	34 km/h	High 30
20 Feb after	30.6 °C	22 %	26 km/h	High 28
21 Feb after	31.4 °C	26 %	20 km/h	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Jan 2020

After · 25 Feb 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 · 255Every 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 Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hsipaw fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 January 2020 to 18 February 2020 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 February 2020 to 11 February 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,634 hectares (66.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hsipaw (6,662 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Myanmar (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 February 2020 → 18 February 2020.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 February 2020 → 28 January 2020.

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?

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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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 3 February 2020 to 11 February 2020. 255 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.

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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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