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Panna fire, March 2021 Panna, Ajaigarh, Majhgawan

Out · last measured on 2 Apr 2021

The fire started on 25 March 2021 in Panna, India, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,284 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 56th largest in Madhya Pradesh since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 69 in India in 2021, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Majhgawan · 2021

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
5,284ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
25 Mar 2021 – 2 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
25 Mar
2021
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

41°high
52km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 150 ha in 2016, 41 ha in 2017, 1,100 ha in 2018, 2,075 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,730 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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. Panna where it started
    3,253 ha
    2.3 %
  2. Ajaigarh
    1,706 ha
    2.3 %
  3. Majhgawan
    353 ha
    0.3 %

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 area1.0 ha
Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
25 Mar 34.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Mar 33.8 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Mar 36.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Mar 37.9 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Mar 40.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Mar 40.7 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
31 Mar 38.6 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
1 Apr 37.2 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Apr 37.5 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Apr after 37.8 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Apr after 37.9 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Apr after 40.4 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Apr after 41.8 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Apr after 40.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Apr after 39.7 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Apr after 37.9 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Apr after 38.3 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Apr after 39.1 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Apr after 39.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Mar 2021
After · 9 Apr 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Panna fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 March 2021 and 2 April 2021: 9 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 5,284 hectares (52.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Panna (3,253 ha, 2.3 %); Ajaigarh (1,706 ha, 2.3 %); Majhgawan (353 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (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: 112 · 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.

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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 112.

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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.