Skip to content
worldfires
TH · Thailand · →

Sa Bot fire, January 2025 Sa Bot

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2025, 05:46 UTC

The fire started on 3 January 2025 in Sa Bot, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 59 in Thailand in 2025, of 239.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,060ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
3 Jan 2025 – 7 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Jan
2025
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
163MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Jan 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jan7 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

34567

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
48km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,251 ha in 2016, 1,282 ha in 2017, 929 ha in 2019, 834 ha in 2020, 182 ha in 2021, 401 ha in 2022, 715 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,874 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sa Bot where it started
    2,072 ha reached on 3 Jan
    6.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
29 Dec 30.4 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Dec 31.0 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Dec 30.4 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Jan 30.5 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Jan 31.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Jan 30.8 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Jan 30.2 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Jan 29.3 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jan 29.6 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Jan 30.8 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Jan after 31.7 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Jan after 31.5 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jan after 30.3 °C 40 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Jan after 27.9 °C 39 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Jan after 25.4 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Jan after 26.9 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jan after 28.7 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jan after 31.1 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jan after 30.5 °C 40 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Jan after 29.9 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Dec 2024
After · 14 Jan 2025

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 4 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
12345678910
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 60Every 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 Sa Bot fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2025 and 7 January 2025: 5 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 2,060 hectares (20.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sa Bot (2,072 ha, 6.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.