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Shadrinsky District fire, May 2021 Shadrinsky District, Talitsky District

Out · last detection 21 May 2021, 08:59 UTC

The fire started on 4 May 2021 in Shadrinsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,209 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Kurgan Oblast since 2016 (of 41 with a page). Number 120 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Compare with…
Burnt area
15,209ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
4 May 2021 – 21 May 2021
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
4 May
2021
Heat detections
740
in a single hotspot: 157 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
438MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 May21 May
21 May 2021

How it evolved, day by day

4 May 2021 · 1,729 MW · 118 5 May 2021 · 3,106 MW · 182 6 May 2021 · 462 MW · 64 7 May 2021 · 548 MW · 83 8 May 2021 · 420 MW · 51 9 May 2021 · 181 MW · 50 10 May 2021 · 19 MW · 4 11 May 2021 · 80 MW · 8 12 May 2021 · 196 MW · 28 13 May 2021 · 436 MW · 52 14 May 2021 · 145 MW · 26 15 May 2021 · 371 MW · 32 16 May 2021 · 85 MW · 15 17 May 2021 · 71 MW · 13 18 May 2021 · 7 MW · 1 19 May 2021 · 17 MW · 4 20 May 2021 · 5 MW · 7 21 May 2021 · 15 MW · 2
4 May 5 May 7 May 10 May 13 May 16 May 19 May

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
62km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.0 mm on 31 May.

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 9.6% of the area of London (152 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. Shadrinsky District where it started
    13,298 ha reached on 4 May
    3.3 %
  2. 1,959 ha reached on 4 May
    0.4 %

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)
4 May 25.6 °C 28 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 May 28.7 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 May 17.4 °C 26 % 62 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
7 May 22.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 May 24.5 °C 6 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 May 25.4 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 May 20.6 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 May 23.5 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 May 23.2 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 May 28.7 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 May 32.1 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 May 32.7 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 May 34.1 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 May 32.8 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 May 24.6 °C 32 % 48 km/h 1.7 mm High 21
19 May 21.0 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 May 25.7 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 May 29.8 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 May after 29.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 May after 28.4 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 May after 35.0 °C 10 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 May after 32.0 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 May after 22.9 °C 31 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 May after 15.3 °C 46 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 May after 24.5 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 May after 29.7 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 May after 31.0 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 May after 22.3 °C 45 % 51 km/h 6.0 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Apr 2021
After · 28 May 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 · 740Every 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 Shadrinsky District fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 May 2021 to 21 May 2021 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 May 2021 to 19 May 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,209 hectares (152.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Shadrinsky District (13,298 ha, 3.3 %); Talitsky District (1,959 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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: 19 May 2021 → 21 May 2021.

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.

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 May 2021 to 19 May 2021. 740 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.