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TH · Thailand · –

Nam Yuen fire, 5 March 2019 น้ำยืน · Nam Yuen

Out · last detection 11 Mar 2019, 18:36 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2019 in Nam Yuen, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,860 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 123 in Thailand in 2019, of 385.

Burnt area
1,860ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
5 Mar 2019 – 11 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
5 Mar
2019
Heat detections
62
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
28MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar11 Mar
11 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2019 · 12 MW · 6 6 Mar 2019 · 35 MW · 18 7 Mar 2019 · 81 MW · 20 8 Mar 2019 · 4 MW · 2 10 Mar 2019 · 19 MW · 4 11 Mar 2019 · 19 MW · 12
5 Mar 7 Mar 10 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

33°high
31km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 945 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 846 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 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. Nam Yuen น้ำยืน where it started
    1,870 ha
    1.7 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 15 % of the area in Thailand

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Mar 31.1 °C 50 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Mar 31.9 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
7 Mar 33.3 °C 36 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Mar 31.8 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Mar 32.2 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Mar 30.9 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Mar 33.0 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Mar after 32.6 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Mar after 31.3 °C 45 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Mar after 31.0 °C 57 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 21
15 Mar after 31.4 °C 49 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
16 Mar after 32.4 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
17 Mar after 33.0 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Mar after 33.4 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Mar after 32.7 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Mar after 31.6 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Mar after 33.0 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 24

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 22.2, a minimum humidity of 50% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 24.

FWI at the start 22.2
Minimum humidity 50 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Chey Saen fire, January 2020
2,324 ha 17 days FWI 22.1 Min. humidity 49 % 86 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

21 days
median duration
2,540 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.0 mm
rain at the end (median; 3 of 24 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (1,860 ha against a median of 2,540 ha) and lasted 7 days, against 21 days.

In 21 of 24, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
31km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 11 Mar, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 3 of 24, with a median of 2.0 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2019
After · 18 Mar 2019

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 · 0Every 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 Thailand

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nam Yuen fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 March 2019 and 11 March 2019: 7 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 1,860 hectares (18.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nam Yuen (1,870 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 24. Their median duration was 21 days and their median area 2,540 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 21 of 24, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.

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.

Emergency number: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 27 February 2019 → 5 March 2019.
  2. Start date: 5 March 2019 → 27 February 2019.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 199 · 191.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.