How long did the Chiang Dao fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 April 2016 to 20 April 2016 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 April 2016 to 15 April 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,567 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Wiang Haeng (1,030 ha, 1.4 %); Chiang Dao (494 ha, 0.2 %); Pai (50 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

TH · Thailand · 2016-04-10 → 2016-04-20

Chiang Dao fire, 10 April 2016 เชียงดาว · Wiang Haeng, Chiang Dao, Pai

Out · last detection 18 Apr 2016, 06:25 UTC

The fire started on 10 April 2016 in Chiang Dao, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,567 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 194th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 180 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pai · 2026 Chiang Dao · 2026 Pai · 2026 Mae Taeng · 2026

Burnt area: 1,567ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 10 Apr 2016 – 20 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 10 Apr; 2016
Heat detections: 46; in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 30MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Apr20 Apr

Play back 18 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Apr 12 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 17 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

34°high

49km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (16 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

Wiang Haeng เวียงแหง

1,030 ha reached on 11 Apr

1.4 %
Chiang Dao เชียงดาว where it started

494 ha reached on 10 Apr

0.2 %
Pai ปาย

50 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 2015

Built-up area1.1 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
3 Apr	30.7 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Apr	30.7 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
5 Apr	31.4 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Apr	30.9 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Apr	32.4 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Apr	31.4 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Apr	32.1 °C	32 %	42 km/h	1.2 mm	High 25
10 Apr	31.8 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Apr	34.1 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Apr	32.2 °C	29 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Apr	32.3 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Apr	33.1 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Apr	33.4 °C	25 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Apr	34.2 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Apr	34.3 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 44
18 Apr	33.1 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Apr	33.1 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Apr	32.9 °C	27 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Apr after	32.9 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
22 Apr after	29.1 °C	36 %	60 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 38
23 Apr after	32.4 °C	33 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Apr after	31.3 °C	38 %	49 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
25 Apr after	31.6 °C	37 %	47 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Apr 2016

After · 27 Apr 2016

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.

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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chiang Dao fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 April 2016 to 20 April 2016 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 April 2016 to 15 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,567 hectares (15.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Wiang Haeng (1,030 ha, 1.4 %); Chiang Dao (494 ha, 0.2 %); Pai (50 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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

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.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 15 April 2016 → 20 April 2016.

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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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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 April 2016 to 15 April 2016. 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned