Burned area
satellite only23,555ha
Union of 3 GWIS (Copernicus) perimeters: overlapping areas count once.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 28 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
RU · Russia · –
Selemdzhinsky District fire, 28 May 2018 Selemdzhinsky District
Out · last detection 9 Jun 2018, 03:48 UTC
The fire started on 28 May 2018 in Selemdzhinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,555 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 53th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 491 with a page). Number 49 in Russia in 2018, of 540.
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-25matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only13days
28 May 2018 to 9 Jun 2018: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 9 Jun 2018, 03:48 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only28 May 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 28 May 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only1,067
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 183 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 28 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only6,185MW
Total radiative power on 30 May 2018; hotspots that day: 264.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 30 May 2018
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model22.0FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 2.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 28 May 2018, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model32.4°C · 29% RH
High of 32.4 °C and minimum humidity of 29% on 3 June 2018; gusts of 56 km/h on 1 June 2018.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 28 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 40people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 0.91 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 3 June 2018 → 9 June 2018.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 25 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 23,585 ha
- Dates
- 28 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
- Name
- Selemdzhinsky District
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/selemdzhinsky-district-2018-05-5?v=2026-10-25A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire selemdzhinsky-district-2018-05-5.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-05-28 | 36 | 102 | 29.3 | 6.6 | 16 | 12.3 | 31.7 | 0 | 22 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-05-29 | 88 | 1,020 | 31.1 | 10.4 | 16 | 14.8 | 36.4 | 0 | 25.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-05-30 | 264 | 6,185 | 26.5 | 10.1 | 15 | 16.3 | 41.8 | 0 | 28.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-05-31 | 223 | 4,344 | 27.8 | 5.4 | 16 | 12.4 | 30.2 | 0 | 26.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-01 | 8 | 39 | 27.3 | 13 | 35 | 12.1 | 56.5 | 0.3 | 21.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-02 | 95 | 806 | 30.7 | 8.6 | 18 | 12.4 | 30.2 | 0 | 26.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-03 | 345 | 5,050 | 32.4 | 14.1 | 29 | 20.4 | 46.8 | 3.5 | 13.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-06-04 | 0 | 0 | 24.8 | 13.4 | 45 | 16.9 | 36.4 | 3.3 | 4.4 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2018-06-05 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 11 | 36 | 14.1 | 37.4 | 0.4 | 11.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-06-06 | 1 | 5 | 23.8 | 12.2 | 23 | 18 | 44.6 | 0 | 21.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-07 | 1 | 2 | 20.7 | 10.3 | 33 | 17.3 | 41.4 | 0 | 21.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-08 | 3 | 12 | 21.1 | 9.3 | 26 | 13.6 | 32.4 | 0 | 20.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2018-06-09 | 3 | 12 | 24.7 | 4.7 | 20 | 12 | 25.2 | 0 | 23.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-06-10 | 0 | 0 | 22.7 | 6.2 | 32 | 14.5 | 37.4 | 0 | 23.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2018-06-11 | 0 | 0 | 19.8 | 9.7 | 56 | 11.4 | 29.9 | 1.4 | 6.4 | bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 23,555ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 28 May 2018 – 9 Jun 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 28 May
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 1,067
- in a single hotspot: 183 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.6GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
28 May9 Jun
9 Jun 2018
How it evolved, day by day
30 May
3 Jun
8 Jun
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
56km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 11 Jun.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Moscow boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Selemdzhinsky District where it started23,671 ha reached on 28 May0.5 %
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 2020Built-up area0.91 ha
Residents≈ 40
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.91 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 May | 29.3 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 29 May | 31.1 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 May | 26.5 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 May | 27.8 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Jun | 27.3 °C | 35 % | 56 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 22 |
| 2 Jun | 30.7 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Jun | 32.4 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 3.5 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Jun | 24.8 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 3.3 mm | Very low 4 |
| 5 Jun | 25.6 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 6 Jun | 23.8 °C | 23 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 7 Jun | 20.7 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 Jun | 21.1 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 9 Jun | 24.7 °C | 20 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 10 Jun after | 22.7 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 11 Jun after | 19.8 °C | 56 % | 30 km/h | 1.4 mm | Low 6 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 22.0, a minimum humidity of 16% and 2 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 28.
FWI at the start
22.0
Minimum humidity
16 %
Days without rain
2
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Selemdzhinsky District fire, 28 May 2018
23,555 ha
13 days
FWI 22.0
Min. humidity 16 %
Mazanovsky District fire, May 2016
3,517 ha
3 days
FWI 21.6
Min. humidity 17 %
154 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.5 mm on 24 May.
Selemdzhinsky District fire, May 2016
3,309 ha
1 day
FWI 17.5
Min. humidity 16 %
8 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 9.2 mm on 25 May.
Mazanovsky District fire, May 2018
3,153 ha
3 days
FWI 21.3
Min. humidity 17 %
166 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 11 May.
Mazanovsky District fire, May 2016
4,501 ha
3 days
FWI 20.6
Min. humidity 18 %
91 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 24 May.
Selemdzhinsky District fire, May 2016
4,549 ha
3 days
FWI 19.8
Min. humidity 19 %
18 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 9.2 mm on 25 May.
What happened to them
- 3 days
- median duration
- 4,783 ha
- median area
- 32 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 8.7 mm
- rain at the end (median; 28 of 28 had it)
It was 4.9 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 13 days, against 3 days.
Only 3 of its 28 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 8.7 mm.
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
1.4 mmfirst rain
11 Jun2 days after it ended
56km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 9 Jun, and on 11 Jun 1.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 28 of 28, with a median of 8.7 mm.
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 2016.
- 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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 21 May 2018
After · 16 Jun 2018
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 1,067Every 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
- 10,285 haSelemdzhinsky District30 June 2024 · 14 days · 12 km away
- 44,677 haSelemdzhinsky District5 July 2023 · 19 days · 23 km away
- 50,358 haSelemdzhinsky District28 June 2024 · 17 days · 28 km away
- 18,895 haSelemdzhinsky District2 July 2017 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 40,427 haMazanovsky District8 May 2016 · 4 days · 31 km away
- 22,198 haSelemdzhinsky District23 June 2024 · 13 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Selemdzhinsky District fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 May 2018 to 9 June 2018 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 May 2018 to 3 June 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,555 hectares (235.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Selemdzhinsky District (23,671 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 28. Their median duration was 3 days and their median area 4,783 ha; 32 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 3 of its 28 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 8.7 mm.
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.
- Last day with fire: 3 June 2018 → 9 June 2018.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 May 2018 to 3 June 2018. 1,067 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.
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.