How long did the Mae Wong fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 February 2020 and 26 February 2020: 15 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 5,544 hectares (55.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mae Wong (4,090 ha, 4.1 %); Pang Sila Thong (1,485 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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 · 2020-02-12 → 2020-02-26

Mae Wong fire, February 2020 แม่วงก์ · Mae Wong, Pang Sila Thong

Out · last detection 26 Feb 2020, 18:35 UTC

The fire started on 12 February 2020 in Mae Wong, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,544 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Nakhon Sawan Province since 2016 (of 39 with a page). Number 27 in Thailand in 2020, of 457.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pang Sila Thong · 2016 Pang Sila Thong · 2019 Mae Wong · 2019 Pang Sila Thong · 2023

Burnt area: 5,544ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 12 Feb 2020 – 26 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 12 Feb; 2020
Heat detections: 193; in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 86MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Feb26 Feb

Play back 26 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 19 Feb 21 Feb 23 Feb 25 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

37km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 4 Mar.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,063 ha in 2016, 92 ha in 2017, 834 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,125 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (55 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 Wong แม่วงก์ where it started

4,090 ha reached on 12 Feb

4.1 %
Pang Sila Thong ปางศิลาทอง

1,485 ha reached on 14 Feb

2.0 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
12 Feb	33.7 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
13 Feb	34.6 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
14 Feb	33.5 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
15 Feb	33.6 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
16 Feb	33.2 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
17 Feb	32.4 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
18 Feb	28.6 °C	53 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Feb	30.2 °C	48 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
20 Feb	31.3 °C	43 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
21 Feb	30.8 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
22 Feb	30.0 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
23 Feb	30.5 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
24 Feb	31.5 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Feb	32.9 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Feb	31.9 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Feb after	31.4 °C	47 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Feb after	32.2 °C	47 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Feb after	32.8 °C	52 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 23
1 Mar after	33.6 °C	49 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Mar after	33.1 °C	50 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
3 Mar after	32.7 °C	50 %	26 km/h	0.5 mm	High 22
4 Mar after	32.4 °C	53 %	27 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Feb 2020

After · 4 Mar 2020

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 · 193Every 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 Wong fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 February 2020 and 26 February 2020: 15 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 5,544 hectares (55.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mae Wong (4,090 ha, 4.1 %); Pang Sila Thong (1,485 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 193 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 2020, 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