How long did the Mae Ai fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2023 to 31 March 2023 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2023 to 30 March 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,778 hectares (17.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mae Ai (1,670 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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.

TH · Thailand · 2023-03-26 → 2023-03-31

Mae Ai fire, 26 March 2023 แม่อาย · Mae Ai

Out · last detection 31 Mar 2023, 19:08 UTC

The fire started on 26 March 2023 in Mae Ai, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,778 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 163th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 133 in Thailand in 2023, of 369.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.3 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…

Suggestions: Monghsat · 2023 Mae Lao · 2026 Mae Suai · 2026 Mae Suai · 2016

Burnt area: 1,778ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 26 Mar 2023 – 31 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 26 Mar; 2023
Heat detections: 53; in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 31MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Mar31 Mar

Play back 31 Mar 2023

How it evolved, day by day

26 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar 29 Mar 30 Mar 31 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

39km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 91 ha in 2016, 526 ha in 2017, 710 ha in 2019, 893 ha in 2020, 185 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,538 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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

Mae Ai แม่อาย where it started

1,670 ha reached on 26 Mar

2.1 %

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 area1.9 ha

Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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	Danger (FWI)
26 Mar	36.4 °C	25 %	31 km/h	High 26
27 Mar	35.7 °C	29 %	25 km/h	High 25
28 Mar	37.4 °C	22 %	39 km/h	High 31
29 Mar	35.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 31
30 Mar	36.4 °C	26 %	31 km/h	High 30
31 Mar	36.9 °C	25 %	30 km/h	High 31
1 Apr after	37.4 °C	28 %	34 km/h	High 32
2 Apr after	36.4 °C	27 %	41 km/h	High 35
3 Apr after	35.7 °C	28 %	41 km/h	High 35
4 Apr after	37.0 °C	23 %	39 km/h	High 36
5 Apr after	37.2 °C	20 %	27 km/h	High 32
6 Apr after	37.3 °C	25 %	18 km/h	High 33
7 Apr after	38.1 °C	27 %	20 km/h	High 33
8 Apr after	38.4 °C	28 %	24 km/h	High 34
9 Apr after	40.0 °C	24 %	24 km/h	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Mar 2023

After · 7 Apr 2023

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 27 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 185 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 99: 6.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak185 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10265 µg/m³

Optical depth1.53

WHO 15

242526272829303112

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 · 53Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mae Ai fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2023 to 31 March 2023 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2023 to 30 March 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,778 hectares (17.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mae Ai (1,670 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 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. 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 26 March 2023 to 30 March 2023. 53 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.

Where it burned