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JP · Japan ·

Kamigori fire, March 2023 上郡町 · Kamigori

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2023, 03:58 UTC

The fire started on 29 March 2023 in Kamigori, Japan, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 207 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 22 in Japan in 2023, of 23.

The power measured by the satellite is low (6.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
207ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
29 Mar 2023 – 29 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Mar
2023
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 6 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
22MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Mar29 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

29 Mar 2023 · 22 MW · 5

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

The weather it burned in

18°high
16km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.5 mm on 5 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Kamigori 上郡町 where it started
    208 ha reached on 29 Mar
    1.4 %

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 area0.97 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.97 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
29 Mar 18.2 °C 25 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
30 Mar after 19.4 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
31 Mar after 19.7 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
1 Apr after 22.8 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
2 Apr after 20.4 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
3 Apr after 20.1 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
4 Apr after 19.4 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
5 Apr after 16.1 °C 59 % 49 km/h 8.5 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 2.7, a minimum humidity of 25% and 2 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 2.

FWI at the start 2.7
Minimum humidity 25 %
Days without rain 2
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Kotoura fire, April 2022
218 ha 1 day FWI 0.6 Min. humidity 32 % 87 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 10.9 mm on 21 Apr.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 2. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

8.5 mmfirst rain
5 Apr7 days after it ended
16km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 29 Mar, and on 5 Apr 8.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2019.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Mar 2023
After · 5 Apr 2023

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 31 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak45 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1070 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
27 Mar29 Mar31 Mar
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 · 5Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Japan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kamigori fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 March 2023 and 29 March 2023: 1 day 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 207 hectares (2.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamigori (208 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 18.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 16 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 3, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Japan (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

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

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?

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 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.