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Thoen fire, 19 February 2019 เถิน · Thoen

Out · last detection 25 Feb 2019, 19:38 UTC

The fire started on 19 February 2019 in Thoen, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,239 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 144th largest in Lampang Province since 2016 (of 216 with a page). Number 268 in Thailand in 2019, of 385.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.1 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: Thoen · 2018Thoen · 2026Thoen · 2026Mae Phrik · 2026

Burnt area
1,239ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
19 Feb 2019 – 25 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
19 Feb
2019
Heat detections
30
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
14MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Feb25 Feb
25 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Feb 2019 · 5 MW · 4 20 Feb 2019 · 31 MW · 6 21 Feb 2019 · 5 MW · 2 22 Feb 2019 · 25 MW · 9 23 Feb 2019 · 18 MW · 4 24 Feb 2019 · 4 MW · 2 25 Feb 2019 · 7 MW · 3
19 Feb 20 Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb 25 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
47km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24 ha in 2016, 433 ha in 2017, 220 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 624 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (12 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. Thoen เถิน where it started
    1,246 ha
    0.7 %

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.

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)
12 Feb 31.7 °C 56 % 29 km/h 1.3 mm Low 9
13 Feb 34.0 °C 40 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Feb 34.1 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Feb 33.3 °C 46 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Feb 31.9 °C 53 % 25 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 4
17 Feb 33.7 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 20
18 Feb 33.4 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Feb 34.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Feb 35.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Feb 35.3 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Feb 35.9 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Feb 35.8 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Feb 35.8 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Feb 35.5 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Feb after 34.9 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Feb after 34.8 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Feb after 34.8 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Mar after 35.9 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Mar after 36.1 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Mar after 35.7 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Mar after 35.3 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Mar after 35.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Mar after 36.0 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Mar after 35.4 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Feb 2019
After · 4 Mar 2019

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 · 30Every 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 Thoen fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 February 2019 and 25 February 2019: 7 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 1,239 hectares (12.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Thoen (1,246 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 47 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 · 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. 30 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.

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.