Karamay is a prefecture-level city in the north of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China. The name of the city comes from the Uyghur language and means "black oil", referring to the oil fields near the city. Karamay was the site of one of the worst disasters in modern Chinese history, the 1994 Karamay fire, when 324 people, including 288 school children, lost their lives in a cinema fire on 8 December 1994. Karamay is an exclave of Tacheng Prefecture. History Subdivisions Karamay City has jurisdiction over four districts (). They are not contiguous as Dushanzi District is located south of the Lanxin Railway and forms an exclave, separated from the rest of Karamay City by Kuytun City. Together with Kuytun City, Karamay City forms an enclave surrounded on all sides by Tacheng Prefecture. Geography Karamay is located in the northwest of the Dzungarian basin, with an average elevation of . Its administrative area ranges in latitude from 44° 07' to 46° 08' N and in longitude from 80° 44' to 86° 01' E and has a maximal north–south extent and reaches in east–west width. It borders Hoboksar Mongol Autonomous County to the northeast, Shawan County to the southeast, Toli County and Wusu to the west and Kuytun to the south. The naturally available water supply in the Karamay area is limited: it mostly consists of two small rivers (the Baiyang River and the Da'erbute River () flowing into the Dzungarian Basin from the mountains of its northwestern rim. In addition, the city receives water from the Irtysh River, over the Irtysh–Karamay Canal, which was officially opened in 2008. A number of natural (Ailik Lake) and artificial (Fengcheng, Huangyangquan) reservoirs are located in Karamay's northeastern Urho District; they all are replenished, directly or indirectly, by water from the Irtysh–Karamay Canal. Climate Karamay has an extremely continental desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWk), typified by great seasonal extremes in temperature, varying by ; with long, very hot summers (for its latitude) and long, severely cold winters with brief spring and autumn in between. The monthly 24-hour average temperature is in January and soars to in July and the annual mean is , warmer than most places at the corresponding latitude, due to the long summers. Annual precipitation is and the summer months record the most rainfall, despite relative humidity levels averaging around 30%. With monthly percent possible sunshine