How long did the Mongkaing fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2025 and 19 March 2025: 12 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 3,037 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mongkaing (3,052 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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) · 2025-03-08 → 2025-03-19

Mongkaing fire, 8 March 2025 Mongkaing

Out · last detection 20 Mar 2025, 19:06 UTC

The fire started on 8 March 2025 in Mongkaing, Myanmar (Burma), and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,037 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 311th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 723 with a page). Number 62 in Myanmar (Burma) in 2025, of 123.

Burnt area: 3,037ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 8 Mar 2025 – 19 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Mar; 2025
Heat detections: 201; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 824MW; sum of detected power

Play back 20 Mar 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Mar19 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

891011121314151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

49km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 80 ha in 2017, 11 ha in 2019, 113 ha in 2020, 1,882 ha in 2022, 1,238 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,292 ha that had burned before.

1,882 ha Mongkaing fire, March 2022 4,717 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mongkaing where it started

3,052 ha reached on 2 Mar

0.8 %

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)
8 Mar	33.4 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Mar	32.0 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Mar	33.4 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Mar	32.8 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Mar	33.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Mar	33.3 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Mar	34.3 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
15 Mar	34.7 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Mar	35.3 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Mar	35.6 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
18 Mar	34.7 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Mar	34.2 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Mar after	32.9 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Mar after	32.1 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
22 Mar after	31.0 °C	42 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
23 Mar after	32.6 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Mar after	32.2 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 31
25 Mar after	32.2 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
26 Mar after	32.8 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Mar after	34.3 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
28 Mar after	35.0 °C	19 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Mar after	35.7 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Mar 2025

After · 26 Mar 2025

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 10 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 220 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 121: 8.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak220 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM10229 µg/m³

Optical depth1.62

WHO 15

678910111213141516171819202122

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 · 201Every 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 Mongkaing fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2025 and 19 March 2025: 12 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 3,037 hectares (30.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mongkaing (3,052 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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