How long did the Olyokminsky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 July 2024 and 18 August 2024: 19 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 23,027 hectares (230.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Olyokminsky Ulus (23,724 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 · 2024-07-31 → 2024-08-18

Olyokminsky Ulus fire, 31 July 2024 Olyokminsky Ulus

Out · last detection 18 Aug 2024, 19:07 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2024 in Olyokminsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,027 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 226th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 52 in Russia in 2024, of 558.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024 Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024 Olyokminsky Ulus · 2024 Olyokminsky Ulus · 2018

Burnt area: 23,027ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 31 Jul 2024 – 18 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 31 Jul; 2024
Heat detections: 3,309; in a single hotspot: 426 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul18 Aug

Play back 18 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 3 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 13 Aug 16 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

42km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 mm on 20 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (230 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

Olyokminsky Ulus where it started

23,724 ha reached on 31 Jul

0.2 %

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)
24 Jul	30.0 °C	42 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
25 Jul	32.5 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
26 Jul	30.7 °C	49 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
27 Jul	29.5 °C	49 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
28 Jul	29.4 °C	48 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
29 Jul	23.8 °C	70 %	29 km/h	8.5 mm	Very low 0
30 Jul	19.6 °C	50 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 4
31 Jul	16.0 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
1 Aug	18.5 °C	39 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
2 Aug	19.9 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
3 Aug	22.7 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
4 Aug	23.0 °C	47 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Aug	22.1 °C	61 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 13
6 Aug	25.9 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
7 Aug	25.7 °C	41 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
8 Aug	28.5 °C	29 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Aug	30.1 °C	30 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
10 Aug	29.0 °C	35 %	15 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
11 Aug	26.9 °C	44 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
12 Aug	29.7 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
13 Aug	22.8 °C	47 %	42 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 13
14 Aug	22.9 °C	46 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
15 Aug	20.4 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
16 Aug	22.2 °C	37 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
17 Aug	23.1 °C	41 %	17 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
18 Aug	25.0 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
19 Aug after	25.4 °C	51 %	24 km/h	0.3 mm	High 22
20 Aug after	22.4 °C	63 %	24 km/h	8.1 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Jul 2024

After · 25 Aug 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 19 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 1,159 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 703: 47 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,159 µg/m³

Days over the guideline24 days

PM101,658 µg/m³

Optical depth6.30

WHO 15

293031123456789101112131415161718192021

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 · 3,309Every 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 Olyokminsky Ulus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 July 2024 and 18 August 2024: 19 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 23,027 hectares (230.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Olyokminsky Ulus (23,724 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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 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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,309 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.

Where it burned