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Priuralsky Rayon fire, 22 July 2017 Priuralsky Rayon

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2017, 08:50 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2017 in Priuralsky Rayon, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,012 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug since 2016 (of 54 with a page). Number 185 in Russia in 2017, of 367.

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Suggestions: Priuralsky Rayon · 2017

Burnt area
5,012ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
22 Jul 2017 – 4 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
22 Jul
2017
Heat detections
827
in a single hotspot: 1,337 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
2.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul4 Aug
4 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 23 Jul 2017 · 160 MW · 17 24 Jul 2017 · 468 MW · 55 25 Jul 2017 · 506 MW · 77 26 Jul 2017 · 331 MW · 38 27 Jul 2017 · 369 MW · 59 28 Jul 2017 · 451 MW · 64 29 Jul 2017 · 377 MW · 64 30 Jul 2017 · 779 MW · 107 31 Jul 2017 · 31,881 MW · 322 2 Aug 2017 · 5 MW · 2 3 Aug 2017 · 2 MW · 2 4 Aug 2017 · 345 MW · 19
22 Jul 25 Jul 28 Jul 31 Jul 4 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

29°high
72km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.9 mm on 5 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 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Priuralsky Rayon where it started
    4,891 ha reached on 22 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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
22 Jul 28.9 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Jul 28.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul 27.6 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Jul 23.9 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Jul 19.9 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Jul 20.4 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Jul 21.7 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
29 Jul 22.6 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
30 Jul 23.8 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Jul 25.4 °C 38 % 72 km/h 1.4 mm Extreme 67
1 Aug 17.9 °C 56 % 36 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 1
2 Aug 12.8 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
3 Aug 16.2 °C 47 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
4 Aug 19.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
5 Aug after 14.0 °C 71 % 52 km/h 10.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2017
After · 11 Aug 2017

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 · 827Every 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 Priuralsky Rayon fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 July 2017 to 4 August 2017 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 July 2017 to 2 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,012 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Priuralsky Rayon (4,891 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
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. Last day with fire: 2 August 2017 → 4 August 2017.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 22 July 2017 to 2 August 2017. 827 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 2015, 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.