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Oymyakonsky Ulus fire, 7 July 2021 Oymyakonsky Ulus

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2021, 15:38 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2021 in Oymyakonsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,990 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1067th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1347 with a page). Number 439 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Burnt area
3,990ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
7 Jul 2021 – 20 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
7 Jul
2021
Heat detections
492
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
359MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul20 Jul
20 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jul 2021 · 3 MW · 3 9 Jul 2021 · 25 MW · 9 10 Jul 2021 · 24 MW · 3 11 Jul 2021 · 80 MW · 9 12 Jul 2021 · 600 MW · 49 13 Jul 2021 · 93 MW · 14 14 Jul 2021 · 435 MW · 101 15 Jul 2021 · 759 MW · 33 17 Jul 2021 · 222 MW · 45 18 Jul 2021 · 974 MW · 80 19 Jul 2021 · 550 MW · 74 20 Jul 2021 · 546 MW · 72
7 Jul 11 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

28°high
48km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.1 mm on 22 Jul.

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 2.5% of the area of London (40 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. Oymyakonsky Ulus where it started
    3,945 ha reached on 7 Jul
    0.0 %

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)
7 Jul 23.8 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
8 Jul 25.5 °C 39 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 21
9 Jul 27.3 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
10 Jul 27.3 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Jul 28.1 °C 27 % 38 km/h 1.0 mm High 26
12 Jul 17.2 °C 39 % 47 km/h 3.4 mm Low 7
13 Jul 19.5 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
14 Jul 22.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Jul 24.2 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Jul 22.4 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Jul 25.4 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Jul 21.5 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Jul 26.2 °C 18 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul 28.3 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jul after 25.4 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jul after 18.6 °C 69 % 23 km/h 17.1 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 20.4, a minimum humidity of 43% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 6.

FWI at the start 20.4
Minimum humidity 43 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Oymyakonsky Ulus fire, July 2020
7,279 ha 20 days FWI 14.2 Min. humidity 43 % 126 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 13.3 mm on 11 Aug.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 6. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

17.1 mmfirst rain
22 Jul2 days after it ended
48km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 20 Jul, and on 22 Jul 17.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2019.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2021
After · 27 Jul 2021

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 · 492Every 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 Oymyakonsky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 July 2021 and 20 July 2021: 14 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 3,990 hectares (39.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Oymyakonsky Ulus (3,945 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 492 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.