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Menghai County fire, May 2024 勐海县 · Menghai County

Out · last measured on 5 May 2024

The fire started on 3 May 2024 in Menghai County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,543 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 107th largest in Yunnan Province since 2016 (of 335 with a page). Number 98 in China in 2024, of 249.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Menghai County · 2016Menghai County · 2019Menghai County · 2023Jinghong · 2020

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
1,543ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
3 May 2024 – 5 May 2024
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
3 May
2024
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
54km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 6 May.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 744 ha in 2016, 166 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 771 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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
    1,554 ha
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
3 May 31.5 °C 30 % 46 km/h 1.7 mm High 22
4 May 32.0 °C 29 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 May 30.2 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 May after 31.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Apr 2024
After · 12 May 2024

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 7 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak53 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1083 µg/m³
Optical depth1.96
12345678
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 3 May 2024 and 5 May 2024: 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 1,543 hectares (15.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Menghai County (1,554 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.