The heat NASA's satellites spot on the ground near Pai — what a detection is and isn't in burning season, and the official channels for anything you need to act on.
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From Town Tools. For the current version, visit https://www.towntools.org/pai-mae-hong-son-province-th/satellite-heat
A few times a day, NASA's satellites pass over northern Thailand and flag any patch of heat they see on the ground. This page shows those heat detections near Pai. A detection is not a named fire — it is only a spot the satellite measured as hot, and it can be a farm fire, a forest-floor burn, an industrial flare, or even sun glint. From February to April, when the valley fills with smoke, almost every detection here is agricultural or forest burning done on purpose across the north, not a fire threatening the town. There is no fire name, no size, and no evacuation order in this data; for anything you need to act on, use the official channels below. And when the smoke is bad, the reading that matters most is the air itself — see the town's Pai Air Quality page.
No satellite heat detections near Pai in the last 2 days.
As of 12 October at 18:52, the VIIRS satellite saw no heat within 110 km of town on its latest passes.
A satellite heat map, not an alert system
This page shows where a satellite saw heat, not confirmed fires — and it is not a warning system. Evacuation orders and alerts come from official channels: start with DDPM — Thailand's disaster response (English). If life or property is threatened, call your local emergency number. Detections appear a few hours after each pass, and a quiet map is not a guarantee that nothing is burning.
The official channels
DDPM — Thailand's disaster response (English)The national Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, and the 24-hour disaster hotline 1784. Pai has no evacuation-zone map; if fire or smoke ever forces action, an official warning would come from here or the Mae Hong Son provincial office.
GISTDA — Thailand Fire Monitoring SystemThe national hotspot and fire map that local agencies and residents actually watch — Thailand's own satellite read on where fires and smoke are, updated through the day.
In burning season, most of these are farm fires, not a fire at the edge of town
Northern Thailand's burning season runs February to April, peaking in March and easing in May with the rains. Farmers and foragers clear fields and forest floor with fire across the whole region, and haze drifts in from Myanmar and the provinces around. On a single day in April 2026, satellites counted 1,073 hotspots across 17 northern provinces. So a scatter of detections near Pai in these months is the region's ordinary burning, not a sign that one fire is bearing down on the town. The ones worth a second look are a cluster that stays in the same spot for days, or a detection close to town in the green season — and a call to the official lines below.
The smoke is the real hazard here, and the air page tracks it better than this one
Pai sits in a 550 m bowl that traps smoke, and in burning season the fine-particle haze is the town's defining health problem. PM2.5 in Pai district reached 182.7 µg/m³ in 2026, against a Thai standard of 37.5 and a WHO 24-hour guideline of 15. When the valley is choked, the fires behind it are usually spread across the whole north and over the border, not a single blaze nearby, so this heat map won't tell you how bad the air is. For that, use the town's Pai Air Quality page or the government's Air4Thai.
What a satellite detection is — and what it can't tell you
These detections arrive a few hours after the satellite passes, so this is a near-real-time record, not a live incident board. Each point carries a confidence level, and low-confidence ones are especially easy to misread — they are never counted in the headline. Nothing here tells you a fire's name, how big it is, whether it is under control, or whether anyone needs to leave; the satellite only saw heat. If you need to act, Thailand's 24-hour disaster line 1784 (DDPM) and the channels below are where a real warning would come from.
Checked 12 October at 18:52. Data: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS) — global near-real-time active-fire detections, 375 m resolution. FIRMS shows heat, not fires: it can pick up controlled and crop burns, flares and sun glint, and very new or cloud-covered fires can be missed entirely.
No satellite heat detections near Pai.
Nothing from the latest satellite passes within 110 km of town.