How long did the Nyurbinsky Ulus fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2021 to 14 August 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2021 to 13 August 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,383 hectares (423.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyurbinsky Ulus (22,921 ha, 0.4 %); Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus (17,934 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

RU · Russia · 2021-07-26 → 2021-08-14

Nyurbinsky Ulus fire, 26 July 2021 Nyurbinsky Ulus, Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2021, 04:05 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2021 in Nyurbinsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 42,383 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 101th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 42 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2020 Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus · 2021 Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2021 Nyurbinsky Ulus · 2021

Burnt area: 42,383ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 26 Jul 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 26 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 6,295; in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul14 Aug

Play back 14 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jul 29 Jul 1 Aug 3 Aug 4 Aug 7 Aug 11 Aug 14 Aug

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

47km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.8 mm on 16 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 71 ha in 2018, 1,238 ha in 2020.

923 ha Nyurbinsky Ulus fire, August 2020 23,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (424 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

Nyurbinsky Ulus where it started

22,921 ha reached on 26 Jul

0.4 %
Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus

17,934 ha reached on 26 Jul

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.

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)
26 Jul	31.6 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Jul	28.8 °C	47 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
28 Jul	26.5 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
29 Jul	24.5 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
30 Jul	24.3 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
31 Jul	25.1 °C	31 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Aug	25.9 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 Aug	28.8 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Aug	25.3 °C	41 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Aug	25.9 °C	38 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Aug	26.7 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Aug	20.9 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
7 Aug	21.7 °C	54 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
8 Aug	23.4 °C	60 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 21
9 Aug	26.5 °C	47 %	30 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 18
10 Aug	20.7 °C	76 %	26 km/h	5.5 mm	Very low 0
11 Aug	23.8 °C	53 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
12 Aug	24.3 °C	54 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
13 Aug	25.7 °C	52 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
14 Aug	23.6 °C	62 %	28 km/h	4.6 mm	Very low 2
15 Aug after	18.3 °C	79 %	28 km/h	0.5 mm	Very low 4
16 Aug after	14.2 °C	90 %	29 km/h	6.8 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jul 2021

After · 21 Aug 2021

Before After

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 · 6,295Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Russia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nyurbinsky Ulus fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2021 to 14 August 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2021 to 13 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 42,383 hectares (423.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nyurbinsky Ulus (22,921 ha, 0.4 %); Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus (17,934 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 13 August 2021 → 14 August 2021.

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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What really happened?

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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 26 July 2021 to 13 August 2021. 6,295 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.

Where it burned