How long did the Hsipaw fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 February 2026 to 24 February 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 February 2026 to 24 February 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,363 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hsipaw (3,384 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 · 2026-02-08 → 2026-02-24

Hsipaw fire, 8 February 2026 Hsipaw

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2026, 06:50 UTC

The fire started on 8 February 2026 in Hsipaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 303th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 212 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hsipaw · 2024 Hsipaw · 2026 Lashio · 2019 Lashio · 2022

Burnt area: 3,363ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 8 Feb 2026 – 24 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Feb; 2026
Heat detections: 63; in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Feb24 Feb

Play back 24 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 16 Feb 17 Feb 19 Feb 22 Feb 24 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

32°high

26km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 823 ha in 2019, 874 ha in 2020, 1,273 ha in 2021, 64 ha in 2022, 1,882 ha in 2024, 103 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,569 ha that had burned before.

1,882 ha Hsipaw fire, February 2024 4,762 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

3,384 ha reached on 8 Feb

0.6 %

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 area2.1 ha

Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.1 hectares of built-up land and about 500 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)
15 Feb	30.5 °C	31 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
16 Feb	30.6 °C	29 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Feb	31.2 °C	28 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
18 Feb	32.3 °C	29 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Feb	32.3 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Feb	32.1 °C	37 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
21 Feb	31.2 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
22 Feb	30.5 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 17
23 Feb	30.3 °C	38 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
24 Feb	30.8 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Feb after	26.1 °C	49 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
26 Feb after	26.4 °C	58 %	23 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 11
27 Feb after	28.5 °C	43 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
28 Feb after	30.5 °C	31 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 Mar after	30.2 °C	35 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 Mar after	30.4 °C	30 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Mar after	28.3 °C	41 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Mar after	30.0 °C	35 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Mar after	31.5 °C	38 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
6 Mar after	32.1 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Feb 2026

After · 3 Mar 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM1061 µg/m³

Optical depth1.36

WHO 15

131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 63Every 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 8 February 2026 to 24 February 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 February 2026 to 24 February 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,363 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hsipaw (3,384 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 15 February 2026 → 8 February 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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 15 February 2026 to 24 February 2026. 63 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 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