Skip to content
worldfires
en
MM · Myanmar · →

Mese fire, 3 March 2016 Mese

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2016, 06:50 UTC

The fire started on 3 March 2016 in Mese, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,694 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 2 in Myanmar in 2016, of 157.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mese · 2026Mese · 2024Mese · 2025Bawlake · 2021

Burnt area
14,694ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
3 Mar 2016 – 20 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Mar
2016
Heat detections
639
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Mar20 Mar
21 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

3 Mar 2016 · 9 MW · 2 4 Mar 2016 · 70 MW · 10 5 Mar 2016 · 51 MW · 17 6 Mar 2016 · 145 MW · 39 7 Mar 2016 · 285 MW · 46 8 Mar 2016 · 219 MW · 32 9 Mar 2016 · 302 MW · 46 10 Mar 2016 · 180 MW · 45 11 Mar 2016 · 161 MW · 48 12 Mar 2016 · 107 MW · 25 13 Mar 2016 · 47 MW · 12 14 Mar 2016 · 103 MW · 21 15 Mar 2016 · 281 MW · 69 16 Mar 2016 · 256 MW · 89 17 Mar 2016 · 303 MW · 72 18 Mar 2016 · 111 MW · 29 19 Mar 2016 · 58 MW · 7 20 Mar 2016 · 23 MW · 6 21 Mar 2016 · 8 MW · 1
3 Mar 6 Mar 9 Mar 12 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 18 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

38°high
32km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.3% of the area of London (147 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. Mese where it started
    14,784 ha
    8.1 %

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 Mar 32.9 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
4 Mar 34.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
5 Mar 34.4 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Mar 35.0 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Mar 35.7 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
8 Mar 36.0 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Mar 36.3 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Mar 36.4 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Mar 37.5 °C 29 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Mar 36.7 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Mar 36.1 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Mar 36.8 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Mar 37.2 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Mar 37.4 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Mar 37.8 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Mar 37.7 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Mar 37.4 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Mar 38.4 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Mar after 38.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Mar after 37.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Mar after 37.6 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Mar after 37.3 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Mar after 36.8 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Mar after 37.5 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Mar after 37.1 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Mar after 37.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Mar after 36.6 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Mar after 35.6 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Feb 2016
After · 27 Mar 2016

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 · 639Every 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 Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mese fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 March 2016 and 20 March 2016: 18 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 14,694 hectares (146.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mese (14,784 ha, 8.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 32 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 Myanmar (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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 639 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.