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Olyokminsky Ulus fire, 17 July 2019 Olyokminsky Ulus

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2019, 04:47 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2019 in Olyokminsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,212 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 463th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 151 in Russia in 2019, of 610.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024Olyokminsky Ulus · 2019Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024

Burnt area
11,212ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
17 Jul 2019 – 12 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
17 Jul
2019
Heat detections
2,390
in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
500MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul12 Aug
12 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2019 · 1 MW · 1 20 Jul 2019 · 48 MW · 8 21 Jul 2019 · 294 MW · 30 22 Jul 2019 · 267 MW · 36 23 Jul 2019 · 241 MW · 42 24 Jul 2019 · 1,424 MW · 148 25 Jul 2019 · 868 MW · 167 26 Jul 2019 · 980 MW · 142 27 Jul 2019 · 893 MW · 175 28 Jul 2019 · 2,441 MW · 216 29 Jul 2019 · 651 MW · 89 30 Jul 2019 · 20 MW · 13 31 Jul 2019 · 80 MW · 32 1 Aug 2019 · 171 MW · 63 2 Aug 2019 · 28 MW · 20 3 Aug 2019 · 313 MW · 46 4 Aug 2019 · 8 MW · 5 5 Aug 2019 · 42 MW · 20 6 Aug 2019 · 550 MW · 164 7 Aug 2019 · 923 MW · 250 8 Aug 2019 · 689 MW · 233 9 Aug 2019 · 611 MW · 170 10 Aug 2019 · 456 MW · 160 11 Aug 2019 · 292 MW · 138 12 Aug 2019 · 194 MW · 22
17 Jul 23 Jul 27 Jul 28 Jul 31 Jul 4 Aug 8 Aug 12 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

33°high
46km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.1 mm on 13 Aug.

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 7.1% of the area of London (112 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. Olyokminsky Ulus where it started
    11,125 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.1 %

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)
12 Jul 30.3 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
13 Jul 22.4 °C 75 % 36 km/h 5.7 mm Very low 0
14 Jul 21.1 °C 86 % 23 km/h 8.3 mm Very low 0
15 Jul 26.5 °C 69 % 22 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 0
16 Jul 25.1 °C 57 % 26 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 0
17 Jul 28.0 °C 38 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
18 Jul 22.1 °C 62 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 4
19 Jul 18.8 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
20 Jul 19.6 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
21 Jul 23.5 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
22 Jul 26.3 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Jul 27.7 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Jul 29.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
25 Jul 28.2 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Jul 29.8 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Jul 30.9 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
28 Jul 33.2 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Jul 30.5 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jul 20.5 °C 55 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Low 7
31 Jul 23.4 °C 40 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
1 Aug 26.1 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
2 Aug 23.0 °C 63 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6
3 Aug 25.7 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
4 Aug 17.4 °C 58 % 46 km/h 4.9 mm Very low 2
5 Aug 23.6 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
6 Aug 26.9 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
7 Aug 29.3 °C 28 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
8 Aug 29.5 °C 35 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Aug 26.8 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
10 Aug 26.5 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Aug 25.2 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
12 Aug 25.3 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Aug after 15.7 °C 67 % 33 km/h 17.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2019
After · 19 Aug 2019

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 · 2,390Every 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 Olyokminsky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 July 2019 and 12 August 2019: 27 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 11,212 hectares (112.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Olyokminsky Ulus (11,125 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 46 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,390 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.