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Ishimsky District fire, 5 May 2023 Ishimsky District, Abatsky District, Sladkovsky District

Out · last detection 10 May 2023, 07:40 UTC

The fire started on 5 May 2023 in Ishimsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in Tyumen Oblast since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 125 in Russia in 2023, of 450.

Burnt area
8,456ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
5 May 2023 – 10 May 2023
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
5 May
2023
Heat detections
595
in a single hotspot: 193 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 May10 May
10 May 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 May 2023 · 352 MW · 58 6 May 2023 · 1,742 MW · 132 7 May 2023 · 2,245 MW · 251 8 May 2023 · 390 MW · 30 9 May 2023 · 2,301 MW · 120 10 May 2023 · 35 MW · 4
5 May 7 May 9 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

29°high
49km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,665 ha in 2021, 2,432 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,426 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.3% of the area of London (85 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. Ishimsky District where it started
    8,253 ha reached on 5 May
    1.5 %
  2. 128 ha reached on 6 May
    0.0 %
  3. 2 ha
    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 2025
Built-up area0.31 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 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)

Started with Extreme FWI: < 1 % of the area in Russia Very dry air: 5.9 % of the area in Russia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 May 25.4 °C 5 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 May 26.6 °C 3 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 May 29.1 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
8 May 20.5 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 May 11.1 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 May 14.1 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 May after 17.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 May after 12.5 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 May after 12.6 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 39
14 May after 17.3 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 May after 17.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 May after 19.7 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 May after 14.7 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 May after 14.5 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 May after 19.6 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 May after 22.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 50.3, a minimum humidity of 5% and 20 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 1.

FWI at the start 50.3
Minimum humidity 5 %
Days without rain 20
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Aromashevsky District fire, May 2022
5,284 ha 1 day FWI 46.0 Min. humidity 14 % 97 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 14 May.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
49km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 10 May, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

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 2017.
  • 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 · 28 Apr 2023
After · 17 May 2023

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 9 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 169 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak169 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10242 µg/m³
Optical depth1.89
3 May6 May9 May12 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 · 595Every 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 Ishimsky District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 May 2023 and 10 May 2023: 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 8,456 hectares (84.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ishimsky District (8,253 ha, 1.5 %); Abatsky District (128 ha, 0.0 %); Sladkovsky District (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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

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. 595 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.