How long did the Gonbad-e-Kavus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2019 and 5 October 2019: 6 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 1,388 hectares (13.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gonbad-e-Kavus (1,398 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iran (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

IR · Iran · 2019-09-30 → 2019-10-05

Gonbad-e-Kavus fire, September 2019 Gonbad-e-Kavus

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2019, 09:33 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2019 in Gonbad-e-Kavus, Iran, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,388 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 8 in Iran in 2019, of 16.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gonbad-e-Kavus · 2016

Burnt area: 1,388ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 30 Sept 2019 – 5 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 30 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 52; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 42MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept5 Oct

Play back 5 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

35km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 13 Oct.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 821 ha in 2016.

341 ha Gonbad-e-Kavus fire, September 2016 1,031 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 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

Gonbad-e-Kavus where it started

1,398 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.

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)
30 Sept	30.0 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
1 Oct	31.1 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Oct	30.0 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Oct	30.1 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
4 Oct	30.0 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Oct	29.2 °C	16 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Oct after	33.4 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Oct after	34.9 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
8 Oct after	31.8 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Oct after	33.4 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Oct after	26.9 °C	44 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Oct after	31.7 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Oct after	30.8 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Oct after	19.7 °C	61 %	28 km/h	4.3 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Sept 2019

After · 12 Oct 2019

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 · 0Every 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

1,031 haGonbad-e-KavusSeptember 2016 · 3 days · 3 km away

All fires in Iran ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gonbad-e-Kavus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2019 and 5 October 2019: 6 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 1,388 hectares (13.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gonbad-e-Kavus (1,398 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iran (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: 125 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

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 125.

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.

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 (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.

Where it burned