How long did the Thma Koul fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2025 to 28 January 2025 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2025 to 21 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,498 hectares (25.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Thma Koul (2,514 ha, 2.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cambodia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

KH · Cambodia · 2025-01-08 → 2025-01-28

Thma Koul fire, January 2025 Thma Koul

Out · last detection 27 Jan 2025, 18:44 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2025 in Thma Koul, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,498 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Battambang since 2016 (of 31 with a page). Number 23 in Cambodia in 2025, of 31.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bavel · 2025 Aek Phnum · 2019 Mongkol Borei · 2025 Aek Phnum · 2019

Burnt area: 2,498ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 8 Jan 2025 – 28 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 110; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 48MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan28 Jan

Play back 27 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jan 9 Jan 12 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan 25 Jan

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

45km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 472 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

Thma Koul where it started

2,514 ha reached on 8 Jan

2.9 %

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 area5.8 ha

Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.8 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (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	Danger (FWI)
8 Jan	33.4 °C	35 %	27 km/h	Moderate 21
9 Jan	32.9 °C	38 %	32 km/h	High 23
10 Jan	31.2 °C	46 %	40 km/h	High 25
11 Jan	29.8 °C	41 %	45 km/h	High 27
12 Jan	26.9 °C	40 %	41 km/h	High 27
13 Jan	28.3 °C	38 %	31 km/h	High 24
14 Jan	31.4 °C	38 %	26 km/h	Moderate 21
15 Jan	30.7 °C	48 %	37 km/h	High 25
16 Jan	32.1 °C	43 %	40 km/h	High 26
17 Jan	31.0 °C	41 %	36 km/h	High 26
18 Jan	31.1 °C	41 %	28 km/h	High 22
19 Jan	32.2 °C	40 %	27 km/h	Moderate 21
20 Jan	32.8 °C	36 %	26 km/h	High 23
21 Jan	34.0 °C	27 %	24 km/h	High 27
22 Jan	34.2 °C	27 %	24 km/h	High 27
23 Jan	35.2 °C	28 %	22 km/h	High 28
24 Jan	35.8 °C	31 %	20 km/h	High 30
25 Jan	37.2 °C	29 %	18 km/h	High 28
26 Jan	35.9 °C	34 %	45 km/h	High 32
27 Jan	29.7 °C	39 %	46 km/h	High 34
28 Jan	30.2 °C	38 %	33 km/h	High 29
29 Jan after	30.5 °C	39 %	31 km/h	High 29
30 Jan after	32.0 °C	34 %	28 km/h	High 28
31 Jan after	34.1 °C	31 %	23 km/h	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Jan 2025

After · 4 Feb 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³

Days over the guideline14 days

PM1060 µg/m³

Optical depth0.53

WHO 15

6789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 110Every 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 Cambodia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Thma Koul fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2025 to 28 January 2025 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2025 to 21 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,498 hectares (25.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Thma Koul (2,514 ha, 2.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cambodia (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 21 January 2025 → 28 January 2025.

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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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?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 January 2025 to 21 January 2025. 110 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 4.0 International (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.

Where it burned