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Nautanwa fire, April 2019 Nautanwa, Pharenda

Out · last measured on 22 Apr 2019

The fire started on 15 April 2019 in Nautanwa, India, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,955 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This entry is very probably agricultural burning of stubble or straw that the satellite has merged into a single perimeter, not a wildfire in natural vegetation. We reviewed it by hand: the perimeter comes only from GWIS, lies on densely populated farmland and matches the season when stubble is burnt after the harvest. That is why it is not included in the wildfire rankings.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Naugarh · 2026Maharajganj · 2019Maharajganj · 2026Maharajganj · 2018

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
5,955ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
15 Apr 2019 – 22 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
15 Apr
2019
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

39°high
45km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 2 May.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,739 ha in 2016, 2,512 ha in 2017, 4,019 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,812 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Nautanwa where it started
    3,473 ha
    5.4 %
  2. Pharenda
    2,506 ha
    4.9 %

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)
15 Apr 38.8 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Apr 36.8 °C 38 % 42 km/h 14.6 mm Low 7
17 Apr 30.2 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Apr 34.5 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Apr 36.0 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
20 Apr 36.5 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Apr 37.6 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Apr 35.6 °C 35 % 36 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 20
23 Apr after 34.6 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
24 Apr after 37.2 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Apr after 38.5 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
26 Apr after 39.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Apr after 40.3 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Apr after 40.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Apr after 39.5 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Apr after 39.9 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 May after 40.4 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 39
2 May after 40.6 °C 30 % 41 km/h 2.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Apr 2019
After · 29 Apr 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nautanwa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 April 2019 and 22 April 2019: 8 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 5,955 hectares (59.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nautanwa (3,473 ha, 5.4 %); Pharenda (2,506 ha, 4.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (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.

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.

Report an error
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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 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. 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.