How long did the Katangsky Rayon fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 June 2018 to 4 July 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 June 2018 to 4 July 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,349 hectares (143.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Katangsky Rayon (13,648 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

RU · Russia · 2018-06-14 → 2018-07-04

Katangsky Rayon fire, 14 June 2018 Katangsky Rayon

Out · last detection 4 Jul 2018, 19:51 UTC

The fire started on 14 June 2018 in Katangsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,349 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 75th largest in Irkutsk Oblast since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 85 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Katangsky Rayon · 2016 Katangsky Rayon · 2018 Katangsky Rayon · 2016 Katangsky Rayon · 2020

Burnt area: 14,349ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 14 Jun 2018 – 4 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Jun; 2018
Heat detections: 1,705; in a single hotspot: 240 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 471MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jun4 Jul

Play back 4 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jun 17 Jun 20 Jun 23 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 2 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

31°high

49km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.1 mm on 6 Jul.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 142 ha in 2016.

91 ha Katangsky Rayon fire, July 2016 21,599 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.1% of the area of London (143 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

Katangsky Rayon where it started

13,648 ha reached on 14 Jun

0.1 %

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 area0.16 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of 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)
14 Jun	22.7 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
15 Jun	22.4 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
16 Jun	24.5 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 18
17 Jun	25.5 °C	31 %	34 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 11
18 Jun	26.1 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
19 Jun	28.4 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 17
20 Jun	30.8 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
21 Jun	30.2 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Jun	24.8 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
23 Jun	24.9 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Jun	26.6 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
25 Jun	29.2 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Jun	31.1 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
27 Jun	27.7 °C	28 %	49 km/h	1.3 mm	High 22
28 Jun	27.3 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
29 Jun	22.0 °C	47 %	35 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 5
30 Jun	25.1 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
1 Jul	27.3 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
2 Jul	28.3 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Jul	29.2 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
4 Jul	28.4 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Jul after	20.1 °C	55 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
6 Jul after	13.2 °C	60 %	30 km/h	11.1 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Jun 2018

After · 11 Jul 2018

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.

Detections table · 1,705Every 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 Katangsky Rayon fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 June 2018 to 4 July 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 June 2018 to 4 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,349 hectares (143.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Katangsky Rayon (13,648 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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

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 Start date: 19 June 2018 → 14 June 2018.

RSS Changes to this page

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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 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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 June 2018 to 4 July 2018. 1,705 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.

Where it burned