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Mae Sariang fire, 5 March 2017 แม่สะเรียง · Mae Sariang

Out · last detection 31 Mar 2017, 18:48 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2017 in Mae Sariang, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,375 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Mae Hong Son Province since 2016 (of 361 with a page). The largest in Thailand in 2017, of 155.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mongpan · 2020Hpruso · 2019Mae Sariang · 2016Mae Sariang · 2016

Burnt area
18,375ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
5 Mar 2017 – 1 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
5 Mar
2017
Heat detections
666
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
86MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar1 Apr
31 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2017 · 4 MW · 2 6 Mar 2017 · 7 MW · 2 7 Mar 2017 · 10 MW · 2 8 Mar 2017 · 0 MW · 1 9 Mar 2017 · 3 MW · 1 12 Mar 2017 · 16 MW · 10 13 Mar 2017 · 29 MW · 16 14 Mar 2017 · 156 MW · 51 15 Mar 2017 · 229 MW · 100 16 Mar 2017 · 270 MW · 72 17 Mar 2017 · 158 MW · 45 18 Mar 2017 · 239 MW · 60 19 Mar 2017 · 293 MW · 106 20 Mar 2017 · 364 MW · 84 21 Mar 2017 · 19 MW · 5 22 Mar 2017 · 40 MW · 9 23 Mar 2017 · 68 MW · 16 24 Mar 2017 · 78 MW · 22 25 Mar 2017 · 15 MW · 11 26 Mar 2017 · 37 MW · 15 27 Mar 2017 · 41 MW · 11 28 Mar 2017 · 1 MW · 2 29 Mar 2017 · 28 MW · 10 30 Mar 2017 · 33 MW · 6 31 Mar 2017 · 14 MW · 7
5 Mar 12 Mar 20 Mar 27 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

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,666 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (184 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. Mae Sariang แม่สะเรียง where it started
    17,879 ha reached on 5 Mar
    6.8 %

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 2015
Built-up area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
5 Mar 34.5 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Mar 35.4 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Mar 34.7 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Mar 34.3 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Mar 33.3 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Mar 34.1 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Mar 34.3 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Mar 35.6 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Mar 35.8 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Mar 35.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Mar 36.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Mar 36.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Mar 34.6 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Mar 35.2 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Mar 35.0 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Mar 34.7 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Mar 34.0 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Mar 35.4 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Mar 36.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Mar 36.3 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar 37.3 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Mar 38.3 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Mar 37.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Mar 35.2 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
29 Mar 36.4 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Mar 36.4 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Mar 37.1 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Apr 34.7 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 Apr after 33.2 °C 50 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Apr after 35.3 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
4 Apr after 35.8 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Apr after 36.5 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Apr after 36.6 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Apr after 38.1 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Apr after 38.7 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Apr after 38.3 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Apr after 37.7 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Apr after 38.2 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 34.3, a minimum humidity of 25% and 52 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 18.

FWI at the start 34.3
Minimum humidity 25 %
Days without rain 52
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Mongpan fire, February 2020
4,126 ha 11 days FWI 33.9 Min. humidity 25 % 211 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

11 days
median duration
3,032 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 4 of 18 had it)

It was 6.1 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 28 days, against 11 days.

None of its 18 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 14 of 18, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
41km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 1 Apr, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 4 of 18, with a median of 1.5 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2017
After · 8 Apr 2017

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 · 666Every 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 Mae Sariang fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 March 2017 to 1 April 2017 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 March 2017 to 30 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,375 hectares (183.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mae Sariang (17,879 ha, 6.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 18. Their median duration was 11 days and their median area 3,032 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. None of its 18 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 14 of 18, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.5 mm.

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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 30 March 2017 → 1 April 2017.
  2. Start date: 12 March 2017 → 5 March 2017.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 March 2017 to 30 March 2017. 666 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 2015, 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.