Skip to content
worldfires
en
TH · Thailand · →

Ngao fire, 20 March 2016 งาว · Ngao, Wang Nuea

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2016, 18:42 UTC

The fire started on 20 March 2016 in Ngao, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,329 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 123th largest in Lampang Province since 2016 (of 216 with a page). Number 234 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chae Hom · 2026Wang Nuea · 2026

Burnt area
1,329ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
20 Mar 2016 – 23 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
20 Mar
2016
Heat detections
47
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
87MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Mar23 Mar
23 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

20 Mar 2016 · 20 MW · 3 21 Mar 2016 · 14 MW · 3 22 Mar 2016 · 26 MW · 5 23 Mar 2016 · 287 MW · 16
20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 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

36°high
37km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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. Ngao งาว where it started
    1,337 ha
    0.9 %
  2. Wang Nuea วังเหนือ
    1 ha
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.41 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
16 Mar 35.8 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Mar 36.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Mar 35.9 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Mar 35.4 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Mar 35.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Mar 36.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Mar 35.7 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Mar 35.9 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Mar after 36.0 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Mar after 31.9 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Mar after 32.1 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Mar after 30.6 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
28 Mar after 32.2 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
29 Mar after 30.9 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Mar after 35.1 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Mar after 35.7 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Apr after 34.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Apr after 34.3 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Mar 2016
After · 30 Mar 2016

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 · 47Every 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 Ngao fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 March 2016 and 23 March 2016: 4 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 1,329 hectares (13.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ngao (1,337 ha, 0.9 %); Wang Nuea (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 37 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 Thailand (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.

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

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 47 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 2015, 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.