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Sarysuskiy fire, August 2019 Сарысу ауданы · Sarysuskiy

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2019, 21:13 UTC

The fire started on 3 August 2019 in Sarysuskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,199 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 31th largest in Jambyl Region since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 140 in Kazakhstan in 2019, of 163.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sarysuskiy · 2018Baydibekskiy · 2018

Burnt area
3,199ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
3 Aug 2019 – 4 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Aug
2019
Heat detections
99
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Aug4 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

4 Aug 2019 · 1,590 MW · 99

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
37km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 2% of the area of London (32 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. Sarysuskiy Сарысу ауданы where it started
    3,131 ha reached on 4 Aug
    0.1 %

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)
3 Aug 33.0 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
4 Aug 31.5 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Aug after 34.3 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Aug after 36.2 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Aug after 35.0 °C 10 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
8 Aug after 33.3 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Aug after 26.4 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
10 Aug after 28.2 °C 15 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
11 Aug after 31.8 °C 18 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
12 Aug after 30.9 °C 12 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
13 Aug after 27.3 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Aug after 23.9 °C 27 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 47.3, a minimum humidity of 24% and 30 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 8.

FWI at the start 47.3
Minimum humidity 24 %
Days without rain 30
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Sarysuskiy fire, August 2018
3,054 ha 4 days FWI 45.3 Min. humidity 24 % 10 km away, in 2018

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

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. 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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 4 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 · 27 Jul 2019
After · 11 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 · 99Every 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 Sarysuskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 August 2019 and 4 August 2019: 2 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 3,199 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sarysuskiy (3,131 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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. 99 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.