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Tha Pla fire, April 2023 ท่าปลา · Tha Pla

Out · last detection 16 Apr 2023, 19:09 UTC

The fire started on 10 April 2023 in Tha Pla, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,349 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 58th largest in Uttaradit Province since 2016 (of 104 with a page). Number 219 in Thailand in 2023, of 369.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.3 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…

Suggestions: Tha Pla · 2021Tha Pla · 2020Tha Pla · 2026Tha Pla · 2026

Burnt area
1,349ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
10 Apr 2023 – 15 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Apr
2023
Heat detections
46
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
28MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Apr15 Apr
16 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Apr 2023 · 14 MW · 5 11 Apr 2023 · 51 MW · 19 12 Apr 2023 · 47 MW · 9 14 Apr 2023 · 25 MW · 6 15 Apr 2023 · 24 MW · 4 16 Apr 2023 · 8 MW · 3
10 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 15 Apr 16 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

41°high
36km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 114 ha in 2019, 422 ha in 2020, 519 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 750 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (13 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. Tha Pla ท่าปลา where it started
    1,357 ha
    0.8 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
6 Apr 38.9 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Apr 39.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Apr 38.2 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Apr 37.4 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
10 Apr 39.9 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Apr 39.9 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Apr 40.4 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Apr 39.8 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 40.8 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr 40.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Apr after 38.7 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
17 Apr after 39.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Apr after 40.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Apr after 40.3 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Apr after 39.6 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.8 mm High 30
21 Apr after 39.5 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Apr after 39.9 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Apr after 39.5 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 38
24 Apr after 37.7 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Apr after 40.4 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Apr 2023
After · 22 Apr 2023

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 12 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 57: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak76 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10109 µg/m³
Optical depth1.70
89101112131415161718
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 · 46Every 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 Tha Pla fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 April 2023 and 15 April 2023: 6 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 1,349 hectares (13.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tha Pla (1,357 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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 · 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.

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.

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. 46 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 2025, 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 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.