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KZ · Kazakhstan · –

Karkaralinskiy fire, June 2022 Қарқаралы ауданы · Karkaralinskiy

Out · last detection 20 Jun 2022, 21:04 UTC

The fire started on 18 June 2022 in Karkaralinskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,727 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 71th largest in Karaganda Region since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 10 in Kazakhstan in 2022, of 42.

Burnt area
6,727ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
18 Jun 2022 – 20 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jun
2022
Heat detections
242
in a single hotspot: 96 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jun20 Jun
20 Jun 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jun 2022 · 3 MW · 2 19 Jun 2022 · 378 MW · 70 20 Jun 2022 · 4,413 MW · 170
18 Jun 19 Jun 20 Jun

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
36km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 981 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 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. Karkaralinskiy Қарқаралы ауданы where it started
    6,777 ha reached on 18 Jun
    0.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
18 Jun 26.1 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
19 Jun 28.9 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
20 Jun 31.3 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 39
21 Jun after 29.8 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 52
22 Jun after 29.9 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Jun after 30.6 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jun after 30.4 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Jun after 34.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jun after 33.9 °C 21 % 60 km/h 0.8 mm Extreme 57
27 Jun after 23.9 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
28 Jun after 27.6 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jun after 29.8 °C 15 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
30 Jun after 21.0 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 26.4, a minimum humidity of 24% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 26.4
Minimum humidity 24 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Bayanaul`skiy fire, July 2019
3,073 ha 2 days FWI 24.9 Min. humidity 25 % 97 km away, in 2019

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

What happened to them

3 days
median duration
6,140 ha
median area
19 %
went past 10,000 ha
3.3 mm
rain at the end (median; 15 of 16 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (6,727 ha against a median of 6,140 ha) and lasted 3 days, against 3 days.

In 1 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.3 mm.

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
36km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 20 Jun, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 16, with a median of 3.3 mm.

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 · 11 Jun 2022
After · 27 Jun 2022

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 · 242Every 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 Kazakhstan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Karkaralinskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 June 2022 and 20 June 2022: 3 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 6,727 hectares (67.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Karkaralinskiy (6,777 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 6,140 ha; 19 % went past 10,000 ha. In 1 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.3 mm.

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: 112 · 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 112.

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. 242 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 2020, 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 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.