How long did the Abyysky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2020 and 26 July 2020: 9 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 5,379 hectares (53.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Abyysky Ulus (5,457 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Russia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

RU · Russia · 2020-07-18 → 2020-07-26

Abyysky Ulus fire, July 2020 Abyysky Ulus

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2020, 04:05 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2020 in Abyysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,379 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 880th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 304 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Abyysky Ulus · 2024 Abyysky Ulus · 2024

Burnt area: 5,379ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 18 Jul 2020 – 26 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 18 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 678; in a single hotspot: 151 MW
Danger at start: 3; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul26 Jul

Play back 26 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 20 Jul 22 Jul 24 Jul 26 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

34°high

44km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 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?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

Abyysky Ulus where it started

5,457 ha

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.

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)
18 Jul	18.1 °C	45 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
19 Jul	18.9 °C	56 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
20 Jul	27.1 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
21 Jul	31.2 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
22 Jul	33.2 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
23 Jul	33.6 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
24 Jul	30.7 °C	44 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Jul	29.1 °C	52 %	19 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 16
26 Jul	31.8 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
27 Jul after	25.0 °C	49 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
28 Jul after	14.7 °C	55 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
29 Jul after	12.6 °C	58 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 15
30 Jul after	13.2 °C	61 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
31 Jul after	14.9 °C	63 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
1 Aug after	14.6 °C	64 %	17 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 9
2 Aug after	18.5 °C	49 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
3 Aug after	15.8 °C	58 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
4 Aug after	15.0 °C	54 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
5 Aug after	20.2 °C	42 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jul 2020

After · 2 Aug 2020

Before After

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 · 678Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Abyysky Ulus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2020 and 26 July 2020: 9 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 5,379 hectares (53.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Abyysky Ulus (5,457 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Russia (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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 678 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.

Where it burned