Magdagachinsky District fire, 11 May 2026 Magdagachinsky District, Shimanovsky District
The fire started on 11 May 2026 in Magdagachinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 90,877 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 8th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 535 with a page). Number 11 in Russia in 2026, of 421.
- Burnt area
- 90,877ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 11 May 2026 – 21 May 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 11 May
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 2,489
- in a single hotspot: 294 MW
- Danger at start
- 12
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.7GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 22 May.
This area had burned before
36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25,826 ha in 2016, 296 ha in 2017, 4,781 ha in 2018, 4,882 ha in 2019, 28 ha in 2020, 321 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 32,296 ha that had burned before.
- 7,779 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, May 2016 13,312 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,517 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, May 2016 9,158 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,095 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, April 2016 7,207 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,920 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, May 2016 4,665 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,704 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, May 2019 4,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,178 ha Magdagachinsky District fire, May 2019 4,006 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 467 ha Shimanovsky District fire, May 2016 3,127 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Moscow boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Magdagachinsky District where it started87,579 ha reached on 11 May5.2 %
-
2,123 ha reached on 19 May0.2 %
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 2025Inside 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 May | 12.9 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 12 May | 20.4 °C | 27 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 13 May | 22.4 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 14 May | 16.8 °C | 16 % | 64 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 25 |
| 15 May | 16.9 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 May | 19.8 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 May | 16.4 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 18 May | 16.8 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 19 May | 20.2 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 20 May | 22.7 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 21 May | 25.6 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 22 |
| 22 May after | 22.7 °C | 40 % | 43 km/h | 3.6 mm | Very low 5 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 18 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 224 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 123: 8.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 2,489Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,312 haMagdagachinsky District20 May 2016 · 4 days · 8 km away
- 7,207 haMagdagachinsky DistrictApril 2016 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 9,158 haMagdagachinsky District10 May 2016 · 4 days · 18 km away
- 5,382 haShimanovsky District19 May 2026 · 3 days · 28 km away
- 21,828 haMagdagachinsky District4 May 2016 · 7 days · 29 km away
- 5,204 haMagdagachinsky District10 May 2016 · 4 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Magdagachinsky District fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 May 2026 and 21 May 2026: 11 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 90,877 hectares (908.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Magdagachinsky District (87,579 ha, 5.2 %); Shimanovsky District (2,123 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes 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
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. 2,489 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.
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.