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Selemdzhinsky District fire, 2 July 2023 Selemdzhinsky District

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2023, 16:39 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2023 in Selemdzhinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,935 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 96th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 535 with a page). Number 55 in Russia in 2023, of 450.

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Suggestions: Selemdzhinsky District · 2023Selemdzhinsky District · 2023

Burnt area
15,935ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
2 Jul 2023 – 23 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Jul
2023
Heat detections
1,984
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
504MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul23 Jul
23 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2023 · 30 MW · 10 3 Jul 2023 · 154 MW · 23 4 Jul 2023 · 344 MW · 68 5 Jul 2023 · 433 MW · 83 6 Jul 2023 · 784 MW · 144 7 Jul 2023 · 850 MW · 182 8 Jul 2023 · 27 MW · 15 9 Jul 2023 · 1 MW · 1 10 Jul 2023 · 224 MW · 57 11 Jul 2023 · 922 MW · 179 12 Jul 2023 · 571 MW · 133 13 Jul 2023 · 595 MW · 125 14 Jul 2023 · 838 MW · 160 15 Jul 2023 · 457 MW · 53 16 Jul 2023 · 413 MW · 108 17 Jul 2023 · 741 MW · 129 18 Jul 2023 · 424 MW · 99 19 Jul 2023 · 345 MW · 81 20 Jul 2023 · 175 MW · 32 21 Jul 2023 · 81 MW · 29 22 Jul 2023 · 1,063 MW · 140 23 Jul 2023 · 1,618 MW · 133
2 Jul 6 Jul 10 Jul 14 Jul 18 Jul 22 Jul 23 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

31°high
42km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.1 mm on 25 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 10% of the area of London (159 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. Selemdzhinsky District where it started
    15,943 ha reached on 2 Jul
    0.3 %

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)
2 Jul 29.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
3 Jul 28.8 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
4 Jul 31.3 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
5 Jul 30.4 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Jul 26.0 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
7 Jul 28.5 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
8 Jul 27.5 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 18
9 Jul 24.4 °C 60 % 34 km/h 13.1 mm Very low 1
10 Jul 24.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
11 Jul 27.6 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
12 Jul 29.0 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Jul 29.0 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
14 Jul 30.4 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
15 Jul 29.3 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Jul 27.0 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
17 Jul 28.2 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Jul 29.8 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Jul 28.7 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Jul 26.5 °C 51 % 32 km/h 7.1 mm Very low 2
21 Jul 22.6 °C 51 % 37 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 2
22 Jul 25.0 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
23 Jul 27.7 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
24 Jul after 25.9 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
25 Jul after 20.5 °C 80 % 24 km/h 14.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2023
After · 30 Jul 2023

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 25 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 1,013 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 340: 23 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,013 µg/m³
Days over the guideline23 days
PM101,445 µg/m³
Optical depth8.81
301234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 1,984Every 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 Selemdzhinsky District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 July 2023 and 23 July 2023: 22 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 15,935 hectares (159.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Selemdzhinsky District (15,943 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
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.

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
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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. 1,984 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.