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Seoni-Malwa fire, March 2020 Seoni-Malwa, Dolariya, Hoshangabad

Out · last measured on 16 Apr 2020

The fire started on 31 March 2020 in Seoni-Malwa, India, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 74,064 hectares from heat detections, spread across 7 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Madhya Pradesh since 2016 (of 60 with a page). The largest in India in 2020, of 18.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Seoni-Malwa · 2019Seoni-Malwa · 2017Dolariya · 2018Dolariya · 2017

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
74,064ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
31 Mar 2020 – 16 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
7
subdistricts
Started on
31 Mar
2020
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

41°high
42km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24,277 ha in 2016, 39,510 ha in 2017, 34,834 ha in 2018, 43,494 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 63,386 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 47% of the area of London (741 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. Seoni-Malwa where it started
    45,167 ha
    35 %
  2. Dolariya
    13,284 ha
    45 %
  3. Hoshangabad
    10,543 ha
    50 %
  4. Itarsi
    4,991 ha
    5.1 %
  5. Hoshangabad nagar
    271 ha
    9.0 %
  6. Babai
    177 ha
    0.3 %
  7. Rehti
    4 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 2020
Built-up area270 ha
Residents≈ 61,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 270 hectares of built-up land and about 61,000 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)
31 Mar 38.0 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Apr 36.7 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Apr 35.7 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Apr 36.2 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Apr 35.7 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Apr 36.9 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Apr 37.2 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Apr 37.9 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Apr 37.7 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Apr 37.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Apr 37.7 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Apr 38.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Apr 40.0 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Apr 39.9 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Apr 40.0 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Apr 40.1 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Apr 40.8 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
17 Apr after 40.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Apr after 39.9 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Apr after 39.2 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Apr after 38.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 Apr after 37.9 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
22 Apr after 39.4 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Apr after 40.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Apr after 40.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Apr after 39.2 °C 13 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
26 Apr after 38.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Mar 2020
After · 23 Apr 2020

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 Seoni-Malwa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 March 2020 and 16 April 2020: 17 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 74,064 hectares (740.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 7 municipalities: Seoni-Malwa (45,167 ha, 35 %); Dolariya (13,284 ha, 45 %); Hoshangabad (10,543 ha, 50 %); Itarsi (4,991 ha, 5.1 %); Hoshangabad nagar (271 ha, 9.0 %); Babai (177 ha, 0.3 %); Rehti (4 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • 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.