How long did the Mae Chan fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 April 2023 to 19 April 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2023 to 15 April 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,134 hectares (21.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mueang Chiang Rai (1,987 ha, 1.2 %); Mae Chan (159 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 2023-04-06 → 2023-04-19

Mae Chan fire, April 2023 แม่จัน · Mueang Chiang Rai, Mae Chan

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2023, 18:12 UTC

The fire started on 6 April 2023 in Mae Chan, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,134 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 68th largest in Chiang Rai Province since 2016 (of 187 with a page). Number 101 in Thailand in 2023, of 369.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.7 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: Mae Chan · 2020 Mueang Chiang Rai · 2016 Mae Lao · 2026 Mae Chan · 2023

Burnt area: 2,134ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 6 Apr 2023 – 19 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 6 Apr; 2023
Heat detections: 79; in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 25MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Apr19 Apr

Play back 19 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 19 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

40°high

30km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 22 Apr.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,051 ha in 2016, 1,556 ha in 2019, 1,144 ha in 2020, 126 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,851 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Mueang Chiang Rai เมืองเชียงราย

1,987 ha reached on 10 Apr

1.2 %
Mae Chan แม่จัน where it started

159 ha reached on 7 Apr

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area1.6 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
7 Apr	37.6 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Apr	37.9 °C	28 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Apr	39.4 °C	24 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Apr	39.6 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Apr	38.8 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Apr	38.9 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Apr	39.3 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Apr	40.1 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Apr	39.5 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Apr	39.8 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Apr	39.8 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Apr	40.4 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Apr	39.5 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Apr after	39.5 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.7 mm	High 35
21 Apr after	38.9 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
22 Apr after	38.0 °C	28 %	32 km/h	2.2 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Mar 2023

After · 26 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 7 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 161 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak161 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10230 µg/m³

Optical depth1.88

WHO 15

789101112131415161718

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 · 79Every 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 Chan fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 April 2023 to 19 April 2023 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2023 to 15 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,134 hectares (21.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mueang Chiang Rai (1,987 ha, 1.2 %); Mae Chan (159 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 15 April 2023 → 19 April 2023.
26 October 2026 Start date: 9 April 2023 → 6 April 2023.

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 9 April 2023 to 15 April 2023. 79 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