How long did the Jorayal fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 April 2016 to 3 May 2016 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 April 2016 to 3 May 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,988 hectares (219.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 7 municipalities: Jorayal (12,818 ha, 31 %); Chure (3,034 ha, 6.2 %); Alital (2,788 ha, 9.5 %); Krishnapur (1,636 ha, 6.5 %); Godawari (1,395 ha, 4.5 %); Parashuram (239 ha, 0.6 %); Ganayapdhura (160 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

NP · Nepal · 2016-04-13 → 2016-05-03

Jorayal fire, April 2016 Jorayal, Chure, Alital

Out · last detection 3 May 2016, 20:52 UTC

The fire started on 13 April 2016 in Jorayal, Nepal, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,988 hectares from heat detections, spread across 7 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Sudurpaschim since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 2 in Nepal in 2016, of 47.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chure · 2019 Godawari · 2021 Jorayal · 2019 Poornagiri · 2016

Burnt area: 21,988ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 13 Apr 2016 – 3 May 2016
Municipalities hit: 7; municipalities
Started on: 13 Apr; 2016
Heat detections: 1,874; in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 313MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Apr3 May

Play back 3 May 2016

How it evolved, day by day

13 Apr 16 Apr 19 Apr 22 Apr 24 Apr 25 Apr 28 Apr 1 May

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

54km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 4 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (220 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

Jorayal where it started

12,818 ha reached on 13 Apr

31 %
Chure

3,034 ha reached on 13 Apr

6.2 %
Alital

2,788 ha reached on 13 Apr

9.5 %
Krishnapur

1,636 ha reached on 13 Apr

6.5 %
Godawari

1,395 ha reached on 13 Apr

4.5 %
Parashuram

239 ha reached on 13 Apr

0.6 %
Ganayapdhura

160 ha reached on 24 Apr

1.2 %

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 2015

Built-up area32 ha

Residents≈ 8,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 32 hectares of built-up land and about 8,900 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
13 Apr	32.0 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Apr	32.0 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Apr	33.4 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Apr	32.6 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Apr	33.1 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Apr	31.9 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.5 mm	High 33
19 Apr	32.8 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Apr	35.5 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Apr	34.2 °C	25 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Apr	34.6 °C	18 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
23 Apr	32.4 °C	16 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Apr	31.6 °C	17 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Apr	33.6 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Apr	34.4 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Apr	34.9 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Apr	34.8 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
29 Apr	34.6 °C	16 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
30 Apr	33.6 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 May	35.2 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
2 May	33.8 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 May	32.6 °C	34 %	31 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 17
4 May after	29.3 °C	41 %	35 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Apr 2016

After · 10 May 2016

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 · 1,874Every 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 Nepal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jorayal fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 April 2016 to 3 May 2016 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 April 2016 to 3 May 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,988 hectares (219.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 7 municipalities: Jorayal (12,818 ha, 31 %); Chure (3,034 ha, 6.2 %); Alital (2,788 ha, 9.5 %); Krishnapur (1,636 ha, 6.5 %); Godawari (1,395 ha, 4.5 %); Parashuram (239 ha, 0.6 %); Ganayapdhura (160 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (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: 101 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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: 20 April 2016 → 13 April 2016.

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.

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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. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 101.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 April 2016 to 3 May 2016. 1,874 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 2015, 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-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). 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