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Katangsky Rayon fire, 2 July 2019 Katangsky Rayon

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2019, 06:48 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2019 in Katangsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 41 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,284 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 40th largest in Irkutsk Oblast since 2016 (of 421 with a page). Number 56 in Russia in 2019, of 610.

Burnt area
22,284ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
41days
2 Jul 2019 – 11 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Jul
2019
Heat detections
5,070
in a single hotspot: 206 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul11 Aug
11 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2019 · 1 MW · 2 3 Jul 2019 · 10 MW · 3 4 Jul 2019 · 90 MW · 15 5 Jul 2019 · 163 MW · 32 8 Jul 2019 · 10 MW · 2 9 Jul 2019 · 160 MW · 34 10 Jul 2019 · 93 MW · 30 11 Jul 2019 · 395 MW · 25 13 Jul 2019 · 79 MW · 20 14 Jul 2019 · 75 MW · 33 15 Jul 2019 · 396 MW · 35 16 Jul 2019 · 149 MW · 60 17 Jul 2019 · 932 MW · 212 18 Jul 2019 · 1,648 MW · 269 19 Jul 2019 · 4,961 MW · 249 20 Jul 2019 · 3,985 MW · 469 21 Jul 2019 · 4,797 MW · 361 22 Jul 2019 · 5,672 MW · 467 23 Jul 2019 · 2,803 MW · 290 24 Jul 2019 · 1,495 MW · 300 25 Jul 2019 · 265 MW · 107 26 Jul 2019 · 177 MW · 40 27 Jul 2019 · 151 MW · 67 28 Jul 2019 · 445 MW · 104 29 Jul 2019 · 157 MW · 80 30 Jul 2019 · 501 MW · 150 31 Jul 2019 · 350 MW · 124 1 Aug 2019 · 114 MW · 50 2 Aug 2019 · 260 MW · 108 3 Aug 2019 · 2,303 MW · 167 4 Aug 2019 · 1,097 MW · 200 5 Aug 2019 · 3,569 MW · 286 6 Aug 2019 · 3,430 MW · 346 7 Aug 2019 · 1,095 MW · 141 8 Aug 2019 · 150 MW · 45 9 Aug 2019 · 264 MW · 71 10 Aug 2019 · 176 MW · 71 11 Aug 2019 · 44 MW · 5
2 Jul 13 Jul 22 Jul 29 Jul 6 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
59km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,739 ha in 2017, 288 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (223 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. Katangsky Rayon where it started
    21,049 ha reached on 2 Jul
    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)
2 Jul 34.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 24.8 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jul 25.4 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Jul 28.1 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jul 28.4 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Jul 23.4 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Jul 27.6 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
9 Jul 28.0 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Jul 29.1 °C 26 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jul 30.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul 21.5 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
13 Jul 26.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Jul 27.1 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Jul 25.9 °C 39 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jul 29.2 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Jul 31.0 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Jul 27.0 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jul 20.5 °C 29 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Jul 20.1 °C 30 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Jul 23.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul 25.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Jul 25.6 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jul 27.4 °C 30 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Jul 28.7 °C 35 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jul 27.0 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Jul 27.5 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Jul 26.5 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
29 Jul 24.4 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Jul 25.9 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Jul 25.1 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Aug 20.7 °C 73 % 23 km/h 4.5 mm Very low 1
2 Aug 27.2 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
3 Aug 24.5 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 17
4 Aug 22.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Aug 22.9 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Aug 26.8 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Aug 26.4 °C 37 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Aug 24.8 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Aug 26.3 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug 25.9 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Aug 19.9 °C 66 % 27 km/h 1.3 mm Low 9
12 Aug after 14.9 °C 57 % 54 km/h 2.8 mm Low 7

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 32.5, a minimum humidity of 20% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 25.

FWI at the start 32.5
Minimum humidity 20 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Katangsky Rayon fire, June 2017
3,583 ha 10 days FWI 28.8 Min. humidity 19 % 39 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 11.4 mm on 3 Jul.

What happened to them

13 days
median duration
5,308 ha
median area
16 %
went past 10,000 ha
5.8 mm
rain at the end (median; 25 of 25 had it)

It was 4.2 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 41 days, against 13 days.

Only 1 of its 25 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 5.8 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

2.8 mmfirst rain
12 Augthe day after it ended
59km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 11 Aug, and on 12 Aug 2.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 25 of 25, with a median of 5.8 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 · 25 Jun 2019
After · 18 Aug 2019

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 · 5,070Every 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 Russia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Katangsky Rayon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 July 2019 and 11 August 2019: 41 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 22,284 hectares (222.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Katangsky Rayon (21,049 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Russia (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: 25. Their median duration was 13 days and their median area 5,308 ha; 16 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 1 of its 25 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 5.8 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. 5,070 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.