How long did the Panchpuri fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2016 and 25 April 2016: 8 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 2,167 hectares (21.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Panchpuri (1,764 ha, 5.3 %); Barahtal (410 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

NP · Nepal · 2016-04-18 → 2016-04-25

Panchpuri fire, 18 April 2016 Panchpuri, Barahtal

Out · last detection 25 Apr 2016, 07:37 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2016 in Panchpuri, Nepal, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,167 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 35th largest in Karnali since 2016 (of 42 with a page). Number 45 in Nepal in 2016, of 47.

The power measured by the satellite is low (17.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bardiya National Park · 2019 Bardiya National Park · 2016 Barahtal · 2019 Mihinpurwa Motipur · 2016

Burnt area: 2,167ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 18 Apr 2016 – 25 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 18 Apr; 2016
Heat detections: 97; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 55MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr25 Apr

Play back 25 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 19 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr 22 Apr 24 Apr 25 Apr

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

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 9 May.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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

Panchpuri where it started

1,764 ha

5.3 %
Barahtal

410 ha

0.9 %

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 area0.12 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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)
10 Apr	35.3 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Apr	34.8 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
12 Apr	31.9 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
13 Apr	32.3 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Apr	33.0 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Apr	34.4 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Apr	33.7 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Apr	33.9 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Apr	31.8 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.6 mm	High 28
19 Apr	33.8 °C	29 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Apr	36.2 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Apr	34.7 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Apr	35.2 °C	22 %	47 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
23 Apr	34.1 °C	17 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Apr	32.9 °C	16 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Apr	34.0 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Apr after	34.9 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Apr after	35.2 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Apr after	35.4 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
29 Apr after	35.6 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Apr after	34.4 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 May after	34.8 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 May after	34.3 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 May after	33.5 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 May after	29.0 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
5 May after	30.2 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 May after	31.4 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.6 mm	High 27
7 May after	30.4 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 May after	29.0 °C	47 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 May after	31.0 °C	45 %	26 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Apr 2016

After · 2 May 2016

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.

Detections table · 97Every 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 Nepal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Panchpuri fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2016 and 25 April 2016: 8 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 2,167 hectares (21.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Panchpuri (1,764 ha, 5.3 %); Barahtal (410 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (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: 101 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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 101.

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. 97 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). 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