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Nyurbinsky Ulus fire, 23 June 2018 Nyurbinsky Ulus

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2018, 06:04 UTC

The fire started on 23 June 2018 in Nyurbinsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 31,483 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 149th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 31 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2018Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2018Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2021Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2019

Burnt area
31,483ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
23 Jun 2018 – 20 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Jun
2018
Heat detections
3,224
in a single hotspot: 529 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
2.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jun20 Jul
20 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jun 2018 · 50 MW · 11 24 Jun 2018 · 66 MW · 21 25 Jun 2018 · 75 MW · 9 26 Jun 2018 · 250 MW · 21 28 Jun 2018 · 678 MW · 62 29 Jun 2018 · 1,289 MW · 100 30 Jun 2018 · 411 MW · 63 1 Jul 2018 · 615 MW · 81 2 Jul 2018 · 8 MW · 2 3 Jul 2018 · 25,763 MW · 549 4 Jul 2018 · 7 MW · 3 5 Jul 2018 · 3 MW · 1 6 Jul 2018 · 62 MW · 30 10 Jul 2018 · 16 MW · 8 11 Jul 2018 · 71 MW · 8 13 Jul 2018 · 428 MW · 135 14 Jul 2018 · 1,105 MW · 261 15 Jul 2018 · 1,334 MW · 147 16 Jul 2018 · 1 MW · 2 17 Jul 2018 · 607 MW · 93 18 Jul 2018 · 3,255 MW · 647 19 Jul 2018 · 7,433 MW · 660 20 Jul 2018 · 9,574 MW · 310
23 Jun 28 Jun 2 Jul 3 Jul 6 Jul 14 Jul 18 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

32°high
46km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 21 Jul.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 599 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 20% of the area of London (315 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. Nyurbinsky Ulus where it started
    30,723 ha reached on 23 Jun
    0.6 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
16 Jun 28.1 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Jun 22.1 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jun 22.8 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Jun 22.3 °C 45 % 30 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 4
20 Jun 21.1 °C 45 % 39 km/h 1.5 mm Low 7
21 Jun 23.0 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 13
22 Jun 25.8 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Jun 27.6 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
24 Jun 27.3 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 14
25 Jun 28.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 21
26 Jun 24.9 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 19
27 Jun 22.1 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Jun 26.4 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jun 24.6 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Jun 26.4 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Jul 29.7 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Jul 29.5 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Jul 31.5 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Jul 23.2 °C 47 % 31 km/h 1.8 mm Low 10
5 Jul 30.9 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 17
6 Jul 28.2 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Jul 25.0 °C 69 % 41 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 1
8 Jul 10.2 °C 79 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 2
9 Jul 18.2 °C 62 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 5
10 Jul 27.2 °C 40 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
11 Jul 23.9 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm Low 11
12 Jul 21.5 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Jul 26.0 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Jul 23.6 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
15 Jul 22.6 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Jul 17.0 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
17 Jul 19.9 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Jul 22.7 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Jul 27.8 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Jul 25.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Jul after 15.0 °C 64 % 45 km/h 4.1 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jun 2018
After · 27 Jul 2018

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 · 3,224Every 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 Nyurbinsky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 June 2018 and 20 July 2018: 28 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 31,483 hectares (314.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nyurbinsky Ulus (30,723 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.

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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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,224 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.