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Horinger fire, April 2020 和林格尔县 · Horinger

Out · last measured on 8 Apr 2020

The fire started on 7 April 2020 in Horinger, China, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,051 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 233th largest in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region since 2016 (of 259 with a page). Number 291 in China in 2020, of 313.

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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
1,051ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
7 Apr 2020 – 8 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Apr
2020
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

20°high
40km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 18 Apr.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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. Horinger 和林格尔县 where it started
    1,053 ha
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
7 Apr 19.1 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
8 Apr 19.9 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Apr after 14.6 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Apr after 11.4 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Apr after 14.3 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Apr after 18.7 °C 5 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Apr after 19.6 °C 6 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Apr after 21.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Apr after 16.9 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Apr after 13.2 °C 16 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Apr after 17.7 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Apr after 14.9 °C 24 % 28 km/h 1.6 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Mar 2020
After · 15 Apr 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Horinger fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 April 2020 and 8 April 2020: 2 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 1,051 hectares (10.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Horinger (1,053 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 19.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.