Skip to content
worldfires
RU · Russia · →

Olyokminsky Ulus fire, 20 June 2024 Olyokminsky Ulus

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2024, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2024 in Olyokminsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,417 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 526th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 169 in Russia in 2024, of 558.

Compare with…
Burnt area
9,417ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
20 Jun 2024 – 14 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Jun
2024
Heat detections
897
in a single hotspot: 206 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
455MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun14 Jul
9 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 2024 · 0 MW · 1 21 Jun 2024 · 303 MW · 59 22 Jun 2024 · 1,150 MW · 60 23 Jun 2024 · 1,014 MW · 80 24 Jun 2024 · 482 MW · 58 25 Jun 2024 · 1,701 MW · 84 26 Jun 2024 · 1,586 MW · 57 27 Jun 2024 · 26 MW · 4 28 Jun 2024 · 16 MW · 14 29 Jun 2024 · 122 MW · 19 30 Jun 2024 · 52 MW · 13 1 Jul 2024 · 418 MW · 41 2 Jul 2024 · 587 MW · 38 3 Jul 2024 · 15 MW · 12 4 Jul 2024 · 231 MW · 54 5 Jul 2024 · 137 MW · 23 6 Jul 2024 · 83 MW · 25 7 Jul 2024 · 272 MW · 88 8 Jul 2024 · 776 MW · 125 9 Jul 2024 · 123 MW · 42
20 Jun 23 Jun 25 Jun 26 Jun 29 Jun 2 Jul 5 Jul 8 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

33°high
44km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.7 mm on 16 Jul.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 809 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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
    9,576 ha reached on 20 Jun
    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 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)
20 Jun 25.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Jun 29.6 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jun 25.1 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
23 Jun 24.5 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Jun 26.8 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
25 Jun 29.5 °C 23 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Jun 27.4 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
27 Jun 24.6 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jun 22.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Jun 25.1 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jun 29.7 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
1 Jul 33.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Jul 32.6 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Jul 26.6 °C 52 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 12
4 Jul 24.3 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Jul 22.2 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Jul 23.6 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Jul 26.8 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Jul 30.3 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jul 28.9 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Jul 28.6 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Jul 29.4 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jul 28.8 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jul 25.9 °C 46 % 34 km/h 2.2 mm Low 11
14 Jul 23.6 °C 53 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
15 Jul after 20.8 °C 60 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Jul after 17.4 °C 89 % 23 km/h 13.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jun 2024
After · 21 Jul 2024

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 2 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 255 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 143: 9.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak255 µg/m³
Days over the guideline26 days
PM10366 µg/m³
Optical depth6.33
1920212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617
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 · 897Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 June 2024 to 14 July 2024 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 June 2024 to 14 July 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,417 hectares (94.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Olyokminsky Ulus (9,576 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 21 June 2024 → 20 June 2024.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 21 June 2024 to 14 July 2024. 897 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.