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TH · Thailand · –

Lom Sak fire, 27 March 2026 หล่มสัก · Lom Sak, Mueang Phetchabun

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2026, 06:37 UTC

The fire started on 27 March 2026 in Lom Sak, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,683 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 23 in Thailand in 2026, of 688.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
21,683ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
27 Mar 2026 – 22 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
27 Mar
2026
Heat detections
617
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
109MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Mar22 Apr
19 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Mar 2026 · 3 MW · 1 28 Mar 2026 · 10 MW · 2 29 Mar 2026 · 27 MW · 8 31 Mar 2026 · 6 MW · 2 1 Apr 2026 · 31 MW · 7 2 Apr 2026 · 226 MW · 27 3 Apr 2026 · 78 MW · 28 4 Apr 2026 · 116 MW · 43 5 Apr 2026 · 115 MW · 27 6 Apr 2026 · 25 MW · 9 7 Apr 2026 · 40 MW · 14 8 Apr 2026 · 190 MW · 50 9 Apr 2026 · 173 MW · 59 10 Apr 2026 · 104 MW · 37 11 Apr 2026 · 68 MW · 21 12 Apr 2026 · 53 MW · 9 13 Apr 2026 · 90 MW · 23 14 Apr 2026 · 451 MW · 105 15 Apr 2026 · 303 MW · 62 16 Apr 2026 · 208 MW · 38 17 Apr 2026 · 71 MW · 16 18 Apr 2026 · 34 MW · 10 19 Apr 2026 · 92 MW · 19
27 Mar 2 Apr 7 Apr 14 Apr

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (47 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

36°high
42km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 25 Apr.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,577 ha in 2016, 867 ha in 2017, 1,145 ha in 2018, 4,853 ha in 2019, 5,720 ha in 2020, 4,795 ha in 2021, 8,178 ha in 2023, 5,868 ha in 2024, 5,012 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,798 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (217 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

  1. Lom Sak หล่มสัก where it started
    20,436 ha reached on 27 Mar
    14 %
  2. Mueang Phetchabun เมืองเพชรบูรณ์
    1,366 ha reached on 15 Apr
    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 area4.0 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.0 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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)
27 Mar 34.2 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Mar 34.3 °C 43 % 29 km/h 1.9 mm High 25
29 Mar 34.2 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
30 Mar 32.9 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
31 Mar 33.3 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Apr 34.5 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Apr 35.3 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Apr 33.7 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Apr 33.2 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
5 Apr 33.6 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Apr 34.3 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Apr 34.3 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Apr 35.0 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Apr 34.5 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Apr 34.9 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Apr 34.4 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Apr 34.5 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Apr 34.3 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
14 Apr 35.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Apr 35.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Apr 35.6 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Apr 34.5 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Apr 33.6 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Apr 33.1 °C 48 % 27 km/h 1.5 mm High 31
20 Apr 32.5 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
21 Apr 34.4 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Apr 33.9 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Apr after 33.7 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
24 Apr after 32.6 °C 51 % 23 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 18
25 Apr after 27.6 °C 71 % 22 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Mar 2026
After · 29 Apr 2026

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 17 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³
Days over the guideline30 days
PM10133 µg/m³
Optical depth1.54
27 Mar2 Apr8 Apr14 Apr20 Apr
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 · 617Every 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 Thailand

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lom Sak fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2026 to 22 April 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 March 2026 to 22 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,683 hectares (216.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lom Sak (20,436 ha, 14 %); Mueang Phetchabun (1,366 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 29 March 2026 → 27 March 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 199 · 191.

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 29 March 2026 to 22 April 2026. 617 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 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.