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Mese fire, March 2018 Mese

Out · last detection 24 Mar 2018, 06:04 UTC

The fire started on 7 March 2018 in Mese, Myanmar (Burma), and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,180 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 159 with a page). Number 3 in Myanmar (Burma) in 2018, of 42.

Burnt area
7,180ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
7 Mar 2018 – 23 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Mar
2018
Heat detections
373
in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Mar 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Mar23 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

789101112131415161718192021222324

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
30km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 1 Apr.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,789 ha in 2016, 4,152 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,043 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mese where it started
    7,222 ha reached on 3 Mar
    4.0 %

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)
7 Mar 36.0 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Mar 36.1 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Mar 35.5 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Mar 33.2 °C 49 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Mar 32.2 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
12 Mar 34.8 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Mar 34.7 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Mar 34.1 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Mar 35.0 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Mar 35.6 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Mar 34.3 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Mar 36.1 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Mar 35.9 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Mar 35.8 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Mar 36.2 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Mar 36.9 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Mar 35.6 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Mar after 37.5 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Mar after 37.3 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Mar after 36.8 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Mar after 36.9 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Mar after 36.1 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Mar after 34.7 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Mar after 34.6 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Mar after 34.1 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
1 Apr after 35.1 °C 36 % 25 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Feb 2018
After · 30 Mar 2018

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 · 373Every 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 (Burma) ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mese fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 March 2018 and 23 March 2018: 17 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 7,180 hectares (71.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mese (7,222 ha, 4.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Myanmar (Burma) (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.

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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.