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Boli County fire, 23 October 2017 勃利县 · Boli County

Out · last measured on 27 Oct 2017

The fire started on 23 October 2017 in Boli County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,728 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 738th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1765 with a page). Number 88 in China in 2017, of 266.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Boli County · 2016Boli County · 2025Boli County · 2023Boli County · 2025

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,728ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
23 Oct 2017 – 27 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
23 Oct
2017
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

14°high
37km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 773 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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. Boli County 勃利县 where it started
    1,724 ha
    0.4 %

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)
23 Oct 7.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
24 Oct 13.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
25 Oct 12.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
26 Oct 12.8 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
27 Oct 14.5 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
28 Oct after 18.5 °C 46 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
29 Oct after 5.7 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
30 Oct after 5.7 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
31 Oct after 10.4 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
1 Nov after 9.0 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 13
2 Nov after 5.9 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
3 Nov after 0.1 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Nov after 2.0 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
5 Nov after 11.7 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
6 Nov after 13.0 °C 48 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2017
After · 3 Nov 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boli County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 October 2017 and 27 October 2017: 5 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 1,728 hectares (17.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Boli County (1,724 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 14.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 9, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119

Satellite cross-check

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 119.

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. No 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 ADM3 (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.