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Katangsky Rayon fire, 11 August 2026 Katangsky Rayon, Evenkiysky Rayon

Out · last detection 2 Sept 2026, 19:49 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2026 in Katangsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,656 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 36 in Russia in 2026, of 420.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
27,656ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
11 Aug 2026 – 2 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
11 Aug
2026
Heat detections
5,496
in a single hotspot: 576 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.9GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug2 Sept
2 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2026 · 67 MW · 10 12 Aug 2026 · 1,603 MW · 49 13 Aug 2026 · 242 MW · 74 14 Aug 2026 · 291 MW · 93 15 Aug 2026 · 626 MW · 161 16 Aug 2026 · 146 MW · 43 17 Aug 2026 · 1,604 MW · 383 18 Aug 2026 · 7,717 MW · 453 19 Aug 2026 · 4,002 MW · 567 20 Aug 2026 · 973 MW · 310 21 Aug 2026 · 2,450 MW · 335 22 Aug 2026 · 304 MW · 146 23 Aug 2026 · 4,466 MW · 615 24 Aug 2026 · 2,073 MW · 418 25 Aug 2026 · 617 MW · 180 26 Aug 2026 · 3,975 MW · 514 27 Aug 2026 · 705 MW · 179 28 Aug 2026 · 116 MW · 43 29 Aug 2026 · 717 MW · 162 30 Aug 2026 · 955 MW · 194 31 Aug 2026 · 8,320 MW · 516 2 Sept 2026 · 255 MW · 51
11 Aug 16 Aug 21 Aug 26 Aug 31 Aug

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (80 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

24°high
41km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 8 Sept.

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 17% of the area of London (277 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. Katangsky Rayon where it started
    29,687 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.2 %
  2. 12 ha reached on 31 Aug
    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 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)
11 Aug 21.0 °C 33 % 30 km/h 2.4 mm Low 6
12 Aug 19.5 °C 38 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
13 Aug 19.4 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
14 Aug 17.8 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
15 Aug 17.3 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Aug 17.9 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
17 Aug 21.1 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
18 Aug 19.5 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
19 Aug 18.0 °C 40 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Aug 19.5 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Aug 20.8 °C 34 % 11 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Aug 22.1 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Aug 20.5 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Aug 20.9 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
25 Aug 22.1 °C 35 % 12 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Aug 21.5 °C 44 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Aug 21.1 °C 39 % 12 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Aug 19.9 °C 52 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
29 Aug 21.0 °C 58 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
30 Aug 20.4 °C 56 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
31 Aug 23.9 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Sept 22.9 °C 50 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
2 Sept 18.0 °C 39 % 41 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 4
3 Sept after 15.6 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
4 Sept after 12.2 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
5 Sept after 11.0 °C 57 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm Low 9
6 Sept after 14.6 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 13
7 Sept after 16.7 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
8 Sept after 17.6 °C 45 % 26 km/h 1.2 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2026
After · 9 Sept 2026

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 25 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 3,271 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 1,900: 127 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak3,271 µg/m³
Days over the guideline26 days
PM103,137 µg/m³
Optical depth4.92
9 Aug15 Aug21 Aug27 Aug2 Sept
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 · 5,496Every 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 Katangsky Rayon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2026 and 2 September 2026: 23 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 27,656 hectares (276.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Katangsky Rayon (29,687 ha, 0.2 %); Evenkiysky Rayon (12 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
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. 5,496 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.