How long did the Mae Rim fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 April 2016 and 20 April 2016: 5 days 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 1,022 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mae Rim (781 ha, 1.7 %); Hang Dong (246 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

TH · Thailand · 2016-04-16 → 2016-04-20

Mae Rim fire, April 2016 แม่ริม · Mae Rim, Hang Dong

Out · last detection 20 Apr 2016, 19:57 UTC

The fire started on 16 April 2016 in Mae Rim, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,022 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 382th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 368 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.3 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: Samoeng · 2026 Samoeng · 2020 Samoeng · 2020 Hang Dong · 2016

Burnt area: 1,022ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 16 Apr 2016 – 20 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 16 Apr; 2016
Heat detections: 31; in a single hotspot: 9 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 26MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Apr20 Apr

Play back 20 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

16 Apr 17 Apr 18 Apr 19 Apr 20 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

36°high

31km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 29 Apr.

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 0.6% of the area of London (10 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 Rim แม่ริม where it started

781 ha

1.7 %
Hang Dong หางดง

246 ha

0.9 %

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.

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)
16 Apr	36.4 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Apr	35.3 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Apr	35.1 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
19 Apr	35.0 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Apr	35.6 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
21 Apr after	35.5 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 41
22 Apr after	32.5 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.8 mm	High 30
23 Apr after	33.7 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Apr after	35.4 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
25 Apr after	35.6 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
26 Apr after	35.6 °C	25 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Apr after	36.5 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Apr after	36.2 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Apr after	33.1 °C	38 %	27 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Apr 2016

After · 27 Apr 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 · 31Every 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 Rim fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 April 2016 and 20 April 2016: 5 days 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 1,022 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mae Rim (781 ha, 1.7 %); Hang Dong (246 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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.

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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?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 31 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.

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