How long did the Mae Rim fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 March 2017 and 21 March 2017: 3 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 1,439 hectares (14.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mae Rim (1,447 ha, 3.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2017-03-19 → 2017-03-21

Mae Rim fire, March 2017 แม่ริม · Mae Rim

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2017, 18:35 UTC

The fire started on 19 March 2017 in Mae Rim, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,439 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 216th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 81 in Thailand in 2017, of 155.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.3 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 Mae Taeng · 2026 Hang Dong · 2016 Samoeng · 2020

Burnt area: 1,439ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 19 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 19 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 40; in a single hotspot: 7 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 31MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Mar21 Mar

Play back 21 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Mar 20 Mar 21 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

38km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 27 Mar.

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 0.9% of the area of London (14 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

1,447 ha

3.2 %

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.

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)
14 Mar	35.3 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Mar	36.8 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Mar	37.1 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Mar	36.3 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
18 Mar	36.4 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Mar	36.4 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Mar	36.4 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
21 Mar	35.0 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
22 Mar after	35.2 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Mar after	35.6 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Mar after	37.2 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Mar after	37.9 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Mar after	37.2 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Mar after	29.9 °C	70 %	38 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Mar 2017

After · 28 Mar 2017

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 · 40Every 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 19 March 2017 and 21 March 2017: 3 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 1,439 hectares (14.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mae Rim (1,447 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 40 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