Monghsat fire, 19 March 2026 Monghsat, Mongton
The fire started on 19 March 2026 in Monghsat, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,370 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 7th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 9 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 34,370ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 19 Mar 2026 – 1 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,044
- in a single hotspot: 318 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.8GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,782 ha in 2016, 7,830 ha in 2017, 2,742 ha in 2018, 11,803 ha in 2019, 10,128 ha in 2020, 11,484 ha in 2021, 940 ha in 2022, 5,039 ha in 2023, 11,025 ha in 2024, 4,643 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 26,320 ha that had burned before.
- 4,428 ha Mongton fire, March 2020 8,206 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,936 ha Mongton fire, March 2019 5,895 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,449 ha Mongton fire, March 2021 5,268 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,272 ha Monghsat fire, March 2024 4,528 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,985 ha Mongton fire, March 2016 4,486 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,827 ha Monghsat fire, March 2023 3,395 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,674 ha Mongton fire, March 2024 3,506 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,403 ha Monghsat fire, March 2017 2,980 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Monghsat where it started27,263 ha5.9 %
-
7,262 ha1.4 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Mar | 32.6 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 20 Mar | 31.8 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 21 Mar | 33.0 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 22 Mar | 31.1 °C | 43 % | 43 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 23 Mar | 32.9 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 24 Mar | 32.8 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 25 Mar | 33.2 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 26 Mar | 32.8 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Mar | 33.9 °C | 29 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Mar | 35.2 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 29 Mar | 33.4 °C | 25 % | 47 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 30 Mar | 34.7 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Mar | 34.9 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Apr | 34.8 °C | 32 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Apr after | 35.1 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Apr after | 35.9 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Apr after | 35.3 °C | 31 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 5 Apr after | 35.5 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 31 |
| 6 Apr after | 34.7 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Apr after | 34.0 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 8 Apr after | 33.0 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Apr after | 32.2 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 10 Apr after | 32.9 °C | 34 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 11 Apr after | 34.5 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 12 Apr after | 35.0 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Apr after | 35.7 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 14 Apr after | 36.4 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Apr after | 36.4 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 16 Apr after | 34.5 °C | 30 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 33 |
| 17 Apr after | 36.7 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Apr after | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 26 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 118 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 77: 5.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 1,044Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,206 haMongton12 March 2020 · 15 days · 9 km away
- 41,742 haMongton21 March 2026 · 25 days · 30 km away
- 8,686 haMonghsat22 March 2023 · 7 days · 32 km away
- 8,518 haMongton22 March 2026 · 13 days · 36 km away
- 10,446 haMongping23 March 2023 · 10 days · 38 km away
- 12,542 haMongton26 March 2019 · 16 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Monghsat fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 March 2026 and 1 April 2026: 14 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 34,370 hectares (343.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Monghsat (27,263 ha, 5.9 %); Mongton (7,262 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,044 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.
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.