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CN · China · –

Yongsheng County fire, 6 February 2017 永胜县 · Yongsheng County

Out · last measured on 9 Feb 2017

The fire started on 6 February 2017 in Yongsheng County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,455 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 89th largest in Yunnan Province since 2016 (of 196 with a page). Number 124 in China in 2017, of 243.

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,455ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
6 Feb 2017 – 9 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
6 Feb
2017
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

24°high
74km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 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. Yongsheng County 永胜县 where it started
    1,459 ha
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Started with Strong wind: 24 % of the area in China Very dry air: 14 % of the area in China

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
6 Feb 24.3 °C 8 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Feb 18.3 °C 18 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
8 Feb 18.7 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Feb 18.8 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 Feb after 18.3 °C 24 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
11 Feb after 17.5 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
12 Feb after 19.9 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Feb after 19.3 °C 16 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Feb after 17.9 °C 18 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Feb after 17.2 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
16 Feb after 20.8 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
17 Feb after 21.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Feb after 21.2 °C 17 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Feb after 21.8 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 19.1, a minimum humidity of 8% and 32 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 8.

FWI at the start 19.1
Minimum humidity 8 %
Days without rain 32
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Huili County fire, February 2023
1,098 ha 2 days FWI 14.5 Min. humidity 9 % 106 km away, in 2023

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
74km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jan 2017
After · 16 Feb 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in China

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yongsheng County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2017 and 9 February 2017: 4 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 1,455 hectares (14.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yongsheng County (1,459 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 24.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · 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.

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 119.

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. No 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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.