How long did the Shimanovsky District fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2018 and 6 April 2018: 5 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 12,024 hectares (120.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Shimanovsky District (11,931 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 13.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, 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.

RU · Russia · 2018-04-02 → 2018-04-06

Shimanovsky District fire, 2 April 2018 Shimanovsky District

Out · last detection 6 Apr 2018, 05:29 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2018 in Shimanovsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,024 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 134th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 535 with a page). Number 110 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Shimanovsky District · 2016 Shimanovsky District · 2023 Shimanovsky District · 2025 Shimanovsky District · 2016

Burnt area: 12,024ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 2 Apr 2018 – 6 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 2 Apr; 2018
Heat detections: 589; in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start: 6; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr6 Apr

Play back 6 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

14°high

74km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016, 548 ha in 2017.

2 ha Shimanovsky District fire, May 2016 3,572 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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

Shimanovsky District where it started

11,931 ha

0.8 %

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.

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)
31 Mar	5.6 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	Low 6
1 Apr	13.8 °C	34 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
2 Apr	9.3 °C	30 %	74 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
3 Apr	-0.9 °C	15 %	72 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
4 Apr	-1.0 °C	15 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
5 Apr	2.2 °C	14 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
6 Apr	3.8 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
7 Apr after	1.7 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 7
8 Apr after	5.9 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
9 Apr after	11.3 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
10 Apr after	14.7 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
11 Apr after	10.3 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
12 Apr after	8.5 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
13 Apr after	8.1 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
14 Apr after	10.6 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
15 Apr after	12.7 °C	10 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
16 Apr after	18.1 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Mar 2018

After · 13 Apr 2018

Before After

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 · 589Every 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

All fires in Russia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Shimanovsky District fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2018 and 6 April 2018: 5 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 12,024 hectares (120.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Shimanovsky District (11,931 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 13.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 589 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.

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.

Where it burned