How long did the Rapti Sonari fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 April 2017 to 22 April 2017 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 April 2017 to 17 April 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 36,223 hectares (362.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 6 municipalities: Rapti Sonari (28,592 ha, 27 %); Kalimati (3,235 ha, 6.4 %); Babai (3,123 ha, 15 %); Dangisharan (957 ha, 8.6 %); Lamahi (425 ha, 1.3 %); Kohalpur (28 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 · 2017-04-01 → 2017-04-22

Rapti Sonari fire, April 2017 Rapti Sonari, Kalimati, Babai

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2017, 07:48 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2017 in Rapti Sonari, Nepal, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,223 hectares from heat detections, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Lumbini since 2016 (of 47 with a page). The largest in Nepal in 2017, of 6.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rapti Sonari · 2016 Babai · 2021 Kalimati · 2026 Rapti Sonari · 2019

Burnt area: 36,223ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 1 Apr 2017 – 22 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit: 6; municipalities
Started on: 1 Apr; 2017
Heat detections: 1,651; in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 240MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr22 Apr

Play back 22 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

1 Apr 4 Apr 7 Apr 10 Apr 12 Apr 13 Apr 16 Apr 21 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

34°high

52km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 23 Apr.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30,645 ha in 2016.

24,043 ha Rapti Sonari fire, March 2016 43,780 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (362 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

Rapti Sonari where it started

28,592 ha reached on 1 Apr

27 %
Kalimati

3,235 ha reached on 1 Apr

6.4 %
Babai

3,123 ha reached on 6 Apr

15 %
Dangisharan

957 ha reached on 3 Apr

8.6 %
Lamahi

425 ha reached on 10 Apr

1.3 %
Kohalpur

28 ha

0.2 %

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 area5.8 ha

Residents≈ 1,500

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.8 hectares of built-up land and about 1,500 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)
1 Apr	34.3 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Apr	34.1 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
3 Apr	33.7 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.7 mm	High 25
4 Apr	33.8 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Apr	30.4 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
6 Apr	32.7 °C	37 %	32 km/h	2.9 mm	Low 10
7 Apr	32.2 °C	42 %	27 km/h	9.6 mm	Very low 3
8 Apr	32.5 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
9 Apr	32.1 °C	20 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
10 Apr	30.3 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Apr	31.1 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 Apr	33.2 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Apr	33.5 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Apr	33.9 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Apr	33.5 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Apr	32.9 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
17 Apr	32.0 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
18 Apr	32.9 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Apr	32.4 °C	46 %	31 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 8
20 Apr	33.0 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
21 Apr	33.3 °C	43 %	33 km/h	2.2 mm	Low 10
22 Apr	32.3 °C	50 %	31 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 15
23 Apr after	32.2 °C	46 %	30 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Mar 2017

After · 29 Apr 2017

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 · 1,651Every 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 Rapti Sonari fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 April 2017 to 22 April 2017 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 April 2017 to 17 April 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 36,223 hectares (362.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 6 municipalities: Rapti Sonari (28,592 ha, 27 %); Kalimati (3,235 ha, 6.4 %); Babai (3,123 ha, 15 %); Dangisharan (957 ha, 8.6 %); Lamahi (425 ha, 1.3 %); Kohalpur (28 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 April 2017 → 22 April 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 3 April 2017 → 1 April 2017.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 April 2017 to 17 April 2017. 1,651 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