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Nurinskiy fire, 30 June 2017 Нұра ауданы · Nurinskiy, Ulytauskiy, Zhanaarkinskiy

Out · last detection 3 Jul 2017, 08:45 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2017 in Nurinskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,970 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 90th largest in Karaganda Region since 2016 (of 222 with a page). Number 97 in Kazakhstan in 2017, of 239.

Compare with…
Burnt area
5,970ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
30 Jun 2017 – 3 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
30 Jun
2017
Heat detections
220
in a single hotspot: 123 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun3 Jul
3 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2017 · 2,585 MW · 93 2 Jul 2017 · 75 MW · 28 3 Jul 2017 · 2,229 MW · 99
1 Jul 2 Jul 3 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
54km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 13 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

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. Nurinskiy Нұра ауданы where it started
    3,959 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. Ulytauskiy Ұлытау ауданы
    1,459 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.0 %
  3. Zhanaarkinskiy Жаңаарқа ауданы
    509 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.0 %

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)
1 Jul 26.7 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Jul 31.3 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Jul 32.5 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jul after 37.4 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Jul after 30.9 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Jul after 38.7 °C 14 % 58 km/h 0.2 mm Very extreme 73
7 Jul after 32.0 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Jul after 31.2 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Jul after 38.8 °C 11 % 66 km/h 0.7 mm Very extreme 87
10 Jul after 26.9 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Jul after 27.9 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jul after 26.0 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 47
13 Jul after 23.1 °C 38 % 45 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2017
After · 10 Jul 2017

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 · 220Every 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 Nurinskiy fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 June 2017 to 3 July 2017 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2017 to 3 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,970 hectares (59.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Nurinskiy (3,959 ha, 0.1 %); Ulytauskiy (1,459 ha, 0.0 %); Zhanaarkinskiy (509 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 1 July 2017 → 30 June 2017.

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.

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 July 2017 to 3 July 2017. 220 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 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.