How long did the Chitinsky District fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 May 2025 to 8 June 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 May 2025 to 1 June 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,637 hectares (426.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chitinsky District (42,542 ha, 2.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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 · 2025-05-10 → 2025-06-08

Chitinsky District fire, 10 May 2025 Chitinsky District

Out · last detection 9 Jun 2025, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 10 May 2025 in Chitinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,637 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in Zabaykalsky Krai since 2016 (of 465 with a page). Number 11 in Russia in 2025, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chitinsky District · 2020 Chitinsky District · 2025 Chitinsky District · 2020 Chitinsky District · 2023

Burnt area: 42,637ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 10 May 2025 – 8 Jun 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 10 May; 2025
Heat detections: 3,039; in a single hotspot: 290 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 May8 Jun

Play back 9 Jun 2025

How it evolved, day by day

11 May 13 May 16 May 20 May 24 May 28 May 1 Jun 7 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

66km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 10 Jun.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 32 ha in 2017, 4 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (426 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

Chitinsky District where it started

42,542 ha reached on 11 May

2.7 %

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 area0.14 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of 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)
10 May	21.0 °C	16 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 May	17.0 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 May	20.1 °C	22 %	50 km/h	0.7 mm	High 23
13 May	11.2 °C	13 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 May	8.9 °C	32 %	42 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 10
15 May	9.3 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 18
16 May	9.8 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 20
17 May	9.2 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 16
18 May	9.3 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 20
19 May	14.2 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 May	16.0 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 May	17.4 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 May	20.4 °C	10 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 May	23.2 °C	12 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
24 May	23.6 °C	15 %	34 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 19
25 May	25.1 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 May	28.0 °C	11 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 May	29.6 °C	11 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 May	28.1 °C	21 %	63 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 41
29 May	15.3 °C	17 %	55 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 13
30 May	10.7 °C	33 %	66 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 15
31 May	14.1 °C	15 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Jun	18.0 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Jun	14.6 °C	24 %	45 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18
3 Jun	15.3 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Jun	15.2 °C	24 %	63 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
5 Jun	15.0 °C	22 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Jun	20.6 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Jun	21.2 °C	13 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Jun	17.0 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Jun after	23.0 °C	8 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Jun after	23.7 °C	14 %	49 km/h	2.0 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 May 2025

After · 15 Jun 2025

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 23 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 643 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 267: 18 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak643 µg/m³

Days over the guideline24 days

PM10654 µg/m³

Optical depth4.06

WHO 15

89101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234

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 · 3,039Every 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

All fires in Russia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chitinsky District fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 May 2025 to 8 June 2025 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 May 2025 to 1 June 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,637 hectares (426.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chitinsky District (42,542 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 1 June 2025 → 8 June 2025.

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.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 May 2025 to 1 June 2025. 3,039 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.

Where it burned