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Menghai County fire, April 2023 勐海县 · Menghai County, Jinghong

Out · last measured on 19 Apr 2023

The fire started on 13 April 2023 in Menghai County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,679 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 70th largest in Yunnan Province since 2016 (of 216 with a page). Number 86 in China in 2023, of 241.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jinghong · 2020Menghai County · 2016Menghai County · 2019Menghai County · 2024

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,679ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
13 Apr 2023 – 19 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
13 Apr
2023
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
53km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 27 Apr.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 197 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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. Menghai County 勐海县 where it started
    1,689 ha
    0.3 %
  2. Jinghong 景洪市
    3 ha
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.10 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
13 Apr 35.1 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Apr 36.0 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Apr 36.3 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Apr 36.2 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Apr 35.7 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Apr 35.8 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Apr 36.5 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Apr after 35.4 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Apr after 35.2 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
22 Apr after 35.2 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 43
23 Apr after 35.0 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Apr after 33.0 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Apr after 35.0 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
26 Apr after 33.4 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
27 Apr after 31.4 °C 40 % 39 km/h 4.2 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Apr 2023
After · 26 Apr 2023

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 17 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM1087 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
111213141516171819202122
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Menghai County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 April 2023 and 19 April 2023: 7 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 1,679 hectares (16.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Menghai County (1,689 ha, 0.3 %); Jinghong (3 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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 119.

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. No 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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.