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Ye fire, 4 March 2020 Ye, Yebyu

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2020, 19:07 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2020 in Ye, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,668 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Mon since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 49 in Myanmar in 2020, of 232.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.3 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: Ye · 2020Sangkhla Buri · 2020Ye · 2023Yebyu · 2023

Burnt area
4,668ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
4 Mar 2020 – 21 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
4 Mar
2020
Heat detections
207
in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
33MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar21 Mar
22 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 2020 · 1 MW · 2 5 Mar 2020 · 11 MW · 2 6 Mar 2020 · 15 MW · 9 7 Mar 2020 · 3 MW · 3 8 Mar 2020 · 59 MW · 12 9 Mar 2020 · 9 MW · 2 10 Mar 2020 · 11 MW · 3 11 Mar 2020 · 45 MW · 17 12 Mar 2020 · 38 MW · 14 13 Mar 2020 · 118 MW · 53 14 Mar 2020 · 132 MW · 33 15 Mar 2020 · 17 MW · 4 16 Mar 2020 · 5 MW · 3 17 Mar 2020 · 35 MW · 12 18 Mar 2020 · 39 MW · 6 21 Mar 2020 · 2 MW · 1 22 Mar 2020 · 20 MW · 5
4 Mar 7 Mar 10 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 21 Mar

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
40km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 737 ha in 2016, 6 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (47 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. Ye where it started
    2,818 ha
    1.0 %
  2. Yebyu
    1,879 ha
    0.5 %

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)
4 Mar 31.8 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
5 Mar 32.6 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
6 Mar 33.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
7 Mar 32.1 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Mar 32.0 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Mar 32.7 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Mar 31.8 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Mar 32.9 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Mar 33.3 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Mar 34.3 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Mar 35.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Mar 32.8 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Mar 32.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Mar 33.5 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Mar 32.9 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Mar 32.5 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
20 Mar 32.1 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Mar 33.0 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Mar after 32.8 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Mar after 34.0 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Mar after 33.8 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
25 Mar after 33.7 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Mar after 33.5 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Mar after 33.6 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Mar after 33.0 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Mar after 33.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Mar after 33.2 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Mar after 33.9 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2020
After · 28 Mar 2020

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 · 207Every 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 Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ye fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2020 and 21 March 2020: 18 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 4,668 hectares (46.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ye (2,818 ha, 1.0 %); Yebyu (1,879 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 40 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.

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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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. 207 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 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.