Bauntovsky Rayon fire, 1 May 2025 Bauntovsky Rayon
The fire started on 1 May 2025 in Bauntovsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 41,870 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3th largest in Buryatia since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 12 in Russia in 2025, of 246.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 41,870ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 29days
- 1 May 2025 – 29 May 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 1 May
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 2,719
- in a single hotspot: 536 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.5GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.5 mm on 30 May.
This area had burned before
16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,293 ha in 2016, 1,519 ha in 2017, 781 ha in 2019, 740 ha in 2020, 3 ha in 2023, 84 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,675 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Moscow boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bauntovsky Rayon where it started41,612 ha reached on 1 May0.6 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Apr | 5.4 °C | 11 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 25 Apr | 6.0 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 1 |
| 26 Apr | 0.4 °C | 14 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 27 Apr | 6.0 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very low 4 |
| 28 Apr | 14.3 °C | 22 % | 69 km/h | 0.7 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 Apr | -1.5 °C | 43 % | 70 km/h | 3.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 30 Apr | 9.1 °C | 31 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 1 May | 7.1 °C | 25 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 2 May | 4.6 °C | 18 % | 49 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 6 |
| 3 May | 6.1 °C | 16 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 4 May | 9.3 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 5 May | 9.7 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 6 May | 10.7 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 11 |
| 7 May | 9.0 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 8 May | 10.7 °C | 13 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 9 May | 15.1 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 10 May | 14.4 °C | 21 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 11 May | 15.3 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 12 May | 16.0 °C | 21 % | 42 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 13 May | 7.9 °C | 20 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 14 May | 6.3 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 15 May | 6.3 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very low 5 |
| 16 May | 8.9 °C | 18 % | 33 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 9 |
| 17 May | 7.9 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 10 |
| 18 May | 5.9 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very low 5 |
| 19 May | 10.6 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 20 May | 11.6 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 21 May | 12.9 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 22 May | 16.2 °C | 25 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 23 May | 19.2 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 24 May | 19.6 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 25 May | 23.5 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 26 May | 26.3 °C | 13 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 May | 26.7 °C | 16 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 May | 25.7 °C | 24 % | 54 km/h | 2.9 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 May | 11.3 °C | 22 % | 51 km/h | 2.4 mm | Low 5 |
| 30 May after | 4.4 °C | 50 % | 48 km/h | 7.5 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 26 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 686 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 354: 24 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 2,719Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,523 haBauntovsky Rayon10 May 2016 · 8 days · 21 km away
- 6,222 haBauntovsky RayonApril 2025 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 11,796 haBauntovsky Rayon19 May 2025 · 9 days · 26 km away
- 10,831 haBauntovsky Rayon11 May 2025 · 18 days · 30 km away
- 8,712 haBauntovsky Rayon3 May 2025 · 19 days · 35 km away
- 5,628 haBauntovsky Rayon9 May 2025 · 6 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bauntovsky Rayon fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 May 2025 and 29 May 2025: 29 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 41,870 hectares (418.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bauntovsky Rayon (41,612 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,719 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.