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Lensky Ulus fire, August 2016 Lensky Ulus

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2016, 04:29 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2016 in Lensky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,248 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 143th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 37 in Russia in 2016, of 692.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lensky Ulus · 2016

Burnt area
32,248ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
30 Aug 2016 – 21 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Aug
2016
Heat detections
4,888
in a single hotspot: 317 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug21 Sept
21 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 2016 · 66 MW · 16 31 Aug 2016 · 134 MW · 29 1 Sept 2016 · 744 MW · 115 2 Sept 2016 · 854 MW · 71 5 Sept 2016 · 1 MW · 1 6 Sept 2016 · 137 MW · 43 7 Sept 2016 · 587 MW · 101 8 Sept 2016 · 1,574 MW · 160 9 Sept 2016 · 2,033 MW · 258 10 Sept 2016 · 1,200 MW · 266 11 Sept 2016 · 2,231 MW · 401 12 Sept 2016 · 3,452 MW · 413 13 Sept 2016 · 3,935 MW · 552 14 Sept 2016 · 1,473 MW · 222 15 Sept 2016 · 3,404 MW · 464 16 Sept 2016 · 1,633 MW · 352 17 Sept 2016 · 4,687 MW · 391 18 Sept 2016 · 2,938 MW · 244 19 Sept 2016 · 1,945 MW · 553 20 Sept 2016 · 1,834 MW · 227 21 Sept 2016 · 50 MW · 9
30 Aug 2 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
40km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 22 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 20% of the area of London (322 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. Lensky Ulus where it started
    33,261 ha reached on 30 Aug
    0.4 %

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.

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)
30 Aug 26.4 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
31 Aug 26.4 °C 33 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
1 Sept 25.8 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Sept 20.2 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
3 Sept 13.6 °C 63 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Sept 15.2 °C 66 % 9 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
5 Sept 15.7 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Low 9
6 Sept 14.0 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
7 Sept 17.8 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Sept 17.3 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Sept 17.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Sept 15.5 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
11 Sept 16.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Sept 16.7 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Sept 17.5 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Sept 18.3 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Sept 17.9 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
16 Sept 20.5 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Sept 21.7 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Sept 17.9 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
19 Sept 13.7 °C 45 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Sept 13.9 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Sept 8.5 °C 59 % 29 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 2
22 Sept after 3.3 °C 88 % 23 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2016
After · 28 Sept 2016

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 · 4,888Every 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 Lensky Ulus fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2016 to 21 September 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2016 to 21 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 32,248 hectares (322.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lensky Ulus (33,261 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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. Start date: 5 September 2016 → 30 August 2016.

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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2016 to 21 September 2016. 4,888 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.

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.