Shadaw fire, 10 March 2022 Shadaw, Langkho
The fire started on 10 March 2022 in Shadaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,436 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 12th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). The largest in Myanmar in 2022, of 77.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.2 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…
- Burnt area
- 18,436ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 10 Mar 2022 – 20 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 10 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 10 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 18MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 21 Mar.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,368 ha in 2016, 8,795 ha in 2017, 4,136 ha in 2018, 8,568 ha in 2019, 10,817 ha in 2020, 8,241 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,709 ha that had burned before.
- 1,852 ha Langkho fire, March 2021 12,533 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,625 ha Shadaw fire, January 2020 3,133 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,023 ha Langkho fire, February 2020 2,521 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 974 ha Langkho fire, March 2019 2,132 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 648 ha Shadaw fire, March 2016 2,699 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 647 ha Shadaw fire, February 2017 2,626 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 596 ha Shadaw fire, February 2021 3,350 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 147 ha Langkho fire, March 2019 2,159 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Shadaw where it started17,535 ha reached on 10 Mar8.0 %
-
997 ha0.2 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Mar | 37.5 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 26 |
| 11 Mar | 38.0 °C | 34 % | 26 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Mar | 38.6 °C | 31 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 13 Mar | 38.4 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Mar | 38.8 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Mar | 38.4 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 16 Mar | 37.5 °C | 36 % | 39 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 26 |
| 17 Mar | 37.0 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 1.9 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Mar | 35.8 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Mar | 37.5 °C | 29 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Mar | 36.2 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 21 Mar after | 34.9 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 3.0 mm | Low 11 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 56Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,840 haShadawFebruary 2024 · 24 days · 6 km away
- 65,971 haShadaw13 March 2026 · 44 days · 17 km away
- 21,278 haMawkmai18 February 2024 · 31 days · 21 km away
- 51,616 haShadaw27 January 2020 · 52 days · 23 km away
- 18,554 haShadaw15 March 2023 · 30 days · 23 km away
- 20,121 haLangkho26 March 2023 · 28 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Shadaw fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 March 2022 and 20 March 2022: 11 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 18,436 hectares (184.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Shadaw (17,535 ha, 8.0 %); Langkho (997 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Myanmar (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.
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.
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
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. 56 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.
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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.