How long did the Aldansky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 June 2023 and 13 July 2023: 14 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 9,285 hectares (92.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Aldansky Ulus (9,104 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.

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 · 2023-06-30 → 2023-07-13

Aldansky Ulus fire, 30 June 2023 Aldansky Ulus

Out · last detection 13 Jul 2023, 02:36 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2023 in Aldansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,285 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 532th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 113 in Russia in 2023, of 450.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 9,285ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 30 Jun 2023 – 13 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 30 Jun; 2023
Heat detections: 958; in a single hotspot: 212 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 604MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun13 Jul

Play back 13 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul 9 Jul 11 Jul 12 Jul 13 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

29°high

55km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 28.3 mm on 14 Jul.

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 5.9% of the area of London (93 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

Aldansky Ulus where it started

9,104 ha

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
30 Jun	27.1 °C	51 %	21 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 1
1 Jul	26.4 °C	60 %	21 km/h	7.0 mm	Very low 0
2 Jul	28.0 °C	41 %	18 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 2
3 Jul	27.0 °C	48 %	22 km/h	4.7 mm	Very low 1
4 Jul	27.5 °C	52 %	22 km/h	2.4 mm	Very low 1
5 Jul	27.2 °C	49 %	27 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 3
6 Jul	26.9 °C	46 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 6
7 Jul	27.3 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.9 mm	Low 7
8 Jul	21.5 °C	45 %	55 km/h	3.5 mm	Very low 2
9 Jul	17.9 °C	35 %	50 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 6
10 Jul	22.1 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
11 Jul	28.4 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
12 Jul	28.8 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
13 Jul	23.6 °C	40 %	42 km/h	2.4 mm	Very low 4
14 Jul after	13.3 °C	89 %	23 km/h	28.3 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jun 2023

After · 20 Jul 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 13 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 418 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 166: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak418 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10598 µg/m³

Optical depth7.17

WHO 15

28293012345678910111213141516

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 958Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aldansky Ulus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 June 2023 and 13 July 2023: 14 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 9,285 hectares (92.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Aldansky Ulus (9,104 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 958 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