How long did the Mindon fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2026 and 6 March 2026: 9 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 6,098 hectares (61.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mindon (6,136 ha, 2.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

MM · Myanmar (Burma) · 2026-02-26 → 2026-03-06

Mindon fire, 26 February 2026 Mindon

Out · last detection 6 Mar 2026, 19:32 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2026 in Mindon, Myanmar (Burma), and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,098 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 189 with a page). Number 86 in Myanmar (Burma) in 2026, of 418.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 6,098ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 26 Feb 2026 – 6 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 26 Feb; 2026
Heat detections: 103; in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Energy released: 228MW; sum of detected power

Play back 6 Mar 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb6 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

262728123456

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

50km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 150 ha in 2016, 1,758 ha in 2017, 778 ha in 2018, 929 ha in 2019, 69 ha in 2020, 66 ha in 2022, 3,376 ha in 2024, 4,184 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,149 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Mindon where it started

6,136 ha reached on 26 Feb

2.4 %

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)
26 Feb	33.9 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Feb	32.6 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Feb	33.2 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Mar	33.9 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Mar	35.3 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Mar	33.4 °C	39 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Mar	33.9 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
5 Mar	34.8 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Mar	33.1 °C	38 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Mar after	35.4 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Mar after	36.1 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Mar after	37.7 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 Mar after	36.0 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.6 mm	High 34
11 Mar after	35.1 °C	30 %	47 km/h	0.3 mm	High 37
12 Mar after	33.3 °C	31 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Mar after	34.6 °C	28 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Mar after	33.8 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.8 mm	High 35
15 Mar after	34.8 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
16 Mar after	34.7 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Feb 2026

After · 13 Mar 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 6 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM1084 µg/m³

Optical depth0.98

WHO 15

2425262728123456789

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)

Detections table · 103Every 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 Myanmar (Burma) ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mindon fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2026 and 6 March 2026: 9 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 6,098 hectares (61.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mindon (6,136 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

Where it burned