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Bauntovsky Rayon fire, 9 May 2025 Bauntovsky Rayon

Out · last detection 14 May 2025, 06:15 UTC

The fire started on 9 May 2025 in Bauntovsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,628 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 88th largest in Buryatia since 2016 (of 198 with a page). Number 122 in Russia in 2025, of 238.

Burnt area
5,628ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
9 May 2025 – 14 May 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
9 May
2025
Heat detections
343
in a single hotspot: 182 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
857MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 May14 May
14 May 2025

How it evolved, day by day

9 May 2025 · 23 MW · 8 10 May 2025 · 2,634 MW · 81 11 May 2025 · 13 MW · 6 12 May 2025 · 1,399 MW · 119 13 May 2025 · 848 MW · 101 14 May 2025 · 224 MW · 28
10 May 13 May

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

The weather it burned in

17°high
49km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 17 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (56 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

  1. Bauntovsky Rayon where it started
    5,552 ha reached on 9 May
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
9 May 16.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
10 May 16.8 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
11 May 16.3 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 May 17.0 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
13 May 8.9 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
14 May 7.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 1.4 mm Low 6
15 May after 8.8 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
16 May after 10.0 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
17 May after 9.2 °C 29 % 38 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 4

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 18.7, a minimum humidity of 21% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 23.

FWI at the start 18.7
Minimum humidity 21 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Tungokochensky District fire, May 2024
4,149 ha 12 days FWI 18.3 Min. humidity 21 % 232 km away, in 2024

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 26.2 mm on 7 Jun.

What happened to them

8 days
median duration
4,149 ha
median area
9 %
went past 10,000 ha
4.5 mm
rain at the end (median; 23 of 23 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (5,628 ha against a median of 4,149 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 8 days.

All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 4.5 mm.

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

1.9 mmfirst rain
17 May3 days after it ended
49km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 14 May, and on 17 May 1.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 23 of 23, with a median of 4.5 mm.

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 · 2 May 2025
After · 21 May 2025

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 11 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 439 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 219: 15 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak439 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10442 µg/m³
Optical depth2.91
7 May10 May13 May16 May
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 · 343Every 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 Russia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bauntovsky Rayon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 May 2025 and 14 May 2025: 6 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 5,628 hectares (56.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bauntovsky Rayon (5,552 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 17.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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.
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: 23. Their median duration was 8 days and their median area 4,149 ha; 9 % went past 10,000 ha. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 4.5 mm.

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.

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?

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. 343 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.

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.