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Mirninsky Ulus fire, 22 August 2026 Mirninsky Ulus, Olenyoksky Ulus

Out · last detection 6 Sept 2026, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2026 in Mirninsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,484 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 309th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 70 in Russia in 2026, of 418.

Compare with…
Burnt area
17,484ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
22 Aug 2026 – 6 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
22 Aug
2026
Heat detections
2,256
in a single hotspot: 525 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
3.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug6 Sept
6 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2026 · 12 MW · 5 23 Aug 2026 · 31 MW · 9 24 Aug 2026 · 14 MW · 10 25 Aug 2026 · 7 MW · 5 26 Aug 2026 · 92 MW · 17 27 Aug 2026 · 51 MW · 16 28 Aug 2026 · 14 MW · 2 29 Aug 2026 · 226 MW · 67 30 Aug 2026 · 5 MW · 6 31 Aug 2026 · 3,282 MW · 404 1 Sept 2026 · 25,010 MW · 1281 2 Sept 2026 · 10,236 MW · 430 6 Sept 2026 · 44 MW · 4
22 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug 1 Sept 6 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
47km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 7 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 255 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (175 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. Mirninsky Ulus where it started
    17,795 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.1 %
  2. 87 ha reached on 29 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)
15 Aug 10.2 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm Low 11
16 Aug 13.4 °C 52 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
17 Aug 14.6 °C 75 % 32 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 0
18 Aug 12.2 °C 64 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
19 Aug 10.4 °C 52 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
20 Aug 15.2 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
21 Aug 17.8 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
22 Aug 17.2 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Aug 19.0 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
24 Aug 19.4 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Aug 19.2 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
26 Aug 20.9 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Aug 21.7 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
28 Aug 21.0 °C 35 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
29 Aug 21.8 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
30 Aug 20.0 °C 51 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
31 Aug 24.3 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Sept 26.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Sept 24.3 °C 31 % 47 km/h 8.3 mm Very low 4
3 Sept 14.9 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
4 Sept 13.1 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
5 Sept 11.1 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
6 Sept 13.8 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Sept after 11.4 °C 69 % 25 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2026
After · 13 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 3 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 1,784 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 730: 49 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,784 µg/m³
Days over the guideline20 days
PM101,788 µg/m³
Optical depth3.90
13141516171819202122232425262728293031123456
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 · 2,256Every 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 Mirninsky Ulus fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 6 September 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2026 to 3 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,484 hectares (174.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mirninsky Ulus (17,795 ha, 0.1 %); Olenyoksky Ulus (87 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

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
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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 22 August 2026 to 3 September 2026. 2,256 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.