How long did the Chitinsky District fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 May 2025 and 16 June 2025: 19 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 23,789 hectares (237.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chitinsky District (23,493 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.

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 · 2025-05-29 → 2025-06-16

Chitinsky District fire, 29 May 2025 Chitinsky District

Out · last detection 16 Jun 2025, 05:56 UTC

The fire started on 29 May 2025 in Chitinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,789 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 34th largest in Zabaykalsky Krai since 2016 (of 465 with a page). Number 26 in Russia in 2025, of 246.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ulyotovsky District · 2025 Chitinsky District · 2025 Chitinsky District · 2025 Karymsky District · 2018

Burnt area: 23,789ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 29 May 2025 – 16 Jun 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 May; 2025
Heat detections: 1,447; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 426MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 May16 Jun

Play back 16 Jun 2025

How it evolved, day by day

29 May 31 May 2 Jun 5 Jun 8 Jun 11 Jun 14 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

67km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 17 Jun.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 28 ha in 2018, 165 ha in 2022, 718 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 856 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (238 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

23,493 ha reached on 29 May

1.5 %

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)
28 May	30.1 °C	18 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
29 May	16.8 °C	19 %	57 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 15
30 May	14.2 °C	34 %	62 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 14
31 May	15.5 °C	16 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
1 Jun	17.4 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21
2 Jun	14.5 °C	28 %	46 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 15
3 Jun	17.6 °C	27 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Jun	17.2 °C	24 %	65 km/h	0.9 mm	High 27
5 Jun	16.6 °C	22 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Jun	21.8 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 Jun	22.7 °C	12 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Jun	17.9 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Jun	23.7 °C	14 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Jun	25.7 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Jun	22.8 °C	28 %	23 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 5
12 Jun	24.9 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
13 Jun	23.2 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Jun	25.0 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Jun	26.3 °C	30 %	59 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
16 Jun	25.4 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Jun after	18.7 °C	38 %	29 km/h	3.7 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 May 2025

After · 23 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 29 May 2025 the air beside the fire reached 235 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 99: 6.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak235 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10238 µg/m³

Optical depth2.61

WHO 15

272829303112345678910111213141516171819

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 · 1,447Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 May 2025 and 16 June 2025: 19 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 23,789 hectares (237.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chitinsky District (23,493 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,447 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