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SY · Syria · –

Tal Tamer fire, 14 September 2019 Tal Tamer

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2019, 11:08 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Tal Tamer, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 121 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 59th largest in Al-Hasakeh since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 138 in Syria in 2019, of 163.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ein Issa · 2019Sarin · 2019Al-Hasakeh · 2019Al-Hasakeh · 2019

Burnt area
121ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
14 Sept 2019 – 19 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
subdistricts
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
77
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
99MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept19 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 99 MW · 3

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
55km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Tal Tamer where it started
    121 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Agricultural areas100 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)

Started with Extreme FWI: 61 % of the area in Syria 60 days without rain: 9.4 % of the area in Syria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Sept 38.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
15 Sept 39.1 °C 16 % 55 km/h 0.8 mm Very extreme 97
16 Sept 33.9 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
17 Sept 34.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Sept 35.7 °C 19 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept 37.9 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Sept after 39.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
21 Sept after 34.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
22 Sept after 32.5 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
23 Sept after 33.2 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
24 Sept after 33.7 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Sept after 34.9 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Sept after 35.6 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
27 Sept after 34.4 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
28 Sept after 35.9 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Sept after 35.5 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 76.8, a minimum humidity of 17% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 19.

FWI at the start 76.8
Minimum humidity 17 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Ein Issa fire, October 2019
416 ha 1 day FWI 79.6 Min. humidity 18 % 134 km away, in 2019

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

1 day
median duration
383 ha
median area
11 %
went past 1,000 ha
—
rain at the end (median; 0 of 19 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 121 ha against a median of 383 ha. It lasted 6 days, against 1 day.

In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

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
55km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 19 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. None of its 19 twins had rain when they ended.

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 · 7 Sept 2019
After · 26 Sept 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 · 3Every 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 Syria

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tal Tamer fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2019 to 19 September 2019 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2019 to 14 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 121 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tal Tamer (121 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 97, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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: 19. Their median duration was 1 day and their median area 383 ha; 11 % went past 1,000 ha. In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.

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.

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. Last day with fire: 14 September 2019 → 19 September 2019.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 September 2019 to 14 September 2019. 3 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 and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.