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KZ · Kazakhstan · –

Moyynkumskiy fire, 23 October 2019 Мойынқұм ауданы · Moyynkumskiy

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2019, 08:44 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2019 in Moyynkumskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,239 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Jambyl Region since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 22 in Kazakhstan in 2019, of 163.

Burnt area
9,239ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
23 Oct 2019 – 29 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Oct
2019
Heat detections
312
in a single hotspot: 115 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
622MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct29 Oct
29 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2019 · 118 MW · 25 24 Oct 2019 · 1,106 MW · 73 25 Oct 2019 · 2,537 MW · 126 26 Oct 2019 · 225 MW · 49 27 Oct 2019 · 128 MW · 22 28 Oct 2019 · 206 MW · 11 29 Oct 2019 · 33 MW · 6
23 Oct 25 Oct 27 Oct 29 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

20°high
33km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 30 Oct.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,868 ha in 2017, 366 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Moyynkumskiy Мойынқұм ауданы where it started
    9,203 ha reached on 23 Oct
    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)
23 Oct 15.1 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Oct 16.6 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Oct 17.6 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Oct 18.2 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Oct 19.1 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Oct 18.3 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Oct 20.1 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Oct after 19.2 °C 27 % 36 km/h 2.6 mm Very high 41

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 26.0, a minimum humidity of 26% and 7 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 3.

FWI at the start 26.0
Minimum humidity 26 %
Days without rain 7
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Moyynkumskiy fire, October 2019
4,156 ha 7 days FWI 33.8 Min. humidity 22 % 36 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 14 Oct.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 3. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

2.6 mmfirst rain
30 Octthe day after it ended
33km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 29 Oct, and on 30 Oct 2.6 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 2017.
  • 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 · 16 Oct 2019
After · 5 Nov 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 · 312Every 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 Moyynkumskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 October 2019 and 29 October 2019: 7 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 9,239 hectares (92.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Moyynkumskiy (9,203 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 20.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

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. 312 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.