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Gorny Ulus fire, 25 June 2021 Gorny Ulus, Khangalassky Ulus

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2021, 02:36 UTC

The fire started on 25 June 2021 in Gorny Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 101,734 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 27th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1347 with a page). Number 15 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Burnt area
101,734ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
25 Jun 2021 – 23 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
25 Jun
2021
Heat detections
13,266
in a single hotspot: 578 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
6.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jun23 Jul
23 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jun 2021 · 24 MW · 1 26 Jun 2021 · 447 MW · 21 27 Jun 2021 · 371 MW · 34 28 Jun 2021 · 174 MW · 16 30 Jun 2021 · 195 MW · 32 1 Jul 2021 · 1,444 MW · 101 2 Jul 2021 · 13,735 MW · 738 3 Jul 2021 · 23,181 MW · 1153 4 Jul 2021 · 4,060 MW · 476 5 Jul 2021 · 842 MW · 170 6 Jul 2021 · 4,363 MW · 337 7 Jul 2021 · 7,223 MW · 990 8 Jul 2021 · 28,483 MW · 1355 9 Jul 2021 · 30 MW · 7 12 Jul 2021 · 415 MW · 173 13 Jul 2021 · 5,471 MW · 778 14 Jul 2021 · 18,769 MW · 1477 15 Jul 2021 · 7,342 MW · 340 16 Jul 2021 · 4,848 MW · 1525 17 Jul 2021 · 5,727 MW · 1015 18 Jul 2021 · 3,021 MW · 399 19 Jul 2021 · 27,708 MW · 1822 20 Jul 2021 · 914 MW · 180 21 Jul 2021 · 3 MW · 2 22 Jul 2021 · 758 MW · 116 23 Jul 2021 · 48 MW · 8
25 Jun 2 Jul 8 Jul 16 Jul 22 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
42km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.6 mm on 24 Jul.

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 64% of the area of London (1,017 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. Gorny Ulus where it started
    102,120 ha reached on 25 Jun
    2.2 %
  2. 165 ha reached on 7 Jul
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
25 Jun 22.9 °C 72 % 20 km/h 7.3 mm Very low 1
26 Jun 26.0 °C 56 % 25 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 3
27 Jun 27.1 °C 47 % 17 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 2
28 Jun 29.1 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
29 Jun 26.4 °C 58 % 30 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 4
30 Jun 27.5 °C 58 % 30 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 1
1 Jul 34.6 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
2 Jul 34.1 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Jul 32.7 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
4 Jul 29.3 °C 42 % 35 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 21
5 Jul 25.2 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
6 Jul 26.5 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
7 Jul 31.4 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
8 Jul 34.2 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Jul 26.6 °C 56 % 40 km/h 4.3 mm Low 6
10 Jul 18.4 °C 62 % 28 km/h 5.2 mm Very low 0
11 Jul 21.0 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
12 Jul 23.3 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
13 Jul 25.3 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
14 Jul 29.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Jul 25.4 °C 44 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Jul 21.5 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
17 Jul 25.1 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Jul 27.8 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
19 Jul 32.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Jul 25.8 °C 55 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
21 Jul 20.4 °C 68 % 35 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 3
22 Jul 28.0 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
23 Jul 25.4 °C 49 % 30 km/h 3.1 mm Moderate 15
24 Jul after 22.3 °C 62 % 32 km/h 11.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jun 2021
After · 30 Jul 2021

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

Detections table · 13,266Every 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 Gorny Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 June 2021 and 23 July 2021: 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 101,734 hectares (1,017.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gorny Ulus (102,120 ha, 2.2 %); Khangalassky Ulus (165 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 105,576 → 101,734 ha.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 13,266 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 2020, 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.