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Srednekolymsky Ulus fire, 17 July 2020 Srednekolymsky Ulus

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2020, 00:24 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2020 in Srednekolymsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,004 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 429th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1347 with a page). Number 142 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Burnt area
11,004ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
17 Jul 2020 – 27 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
17 Jul
2020
Heat detections
977
in a single hotspot: 290 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul27 Jul
27 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2020 · 11 MW · 2 18 Jul 2020 · 18 MW · 4 19 Jul 2020 · 71 MW · 13 20 Jul 2020 · 492 MW · 49 21 Jul 2020 · 1,219 MW · 97 22 Jul 2020 · 944 MW · 154 23 Jul 2020 · 2,157 MW · 119 24 Jul 2020 · 81 MW · 26 25 Jul 2020 · 3,900 MW · 221 26 Jul 2020 · 11,057 MW · 274 27 Jul 2020 · 279 MW · 18
17 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 26 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
47km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 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 6.9% of the area of London (110 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. Srednekolymsky Ulus where it started
    10,876 ha reached on 17 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 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)
17 Jul 12.4 °C 58 % 23 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 5
18 Jul 14.8 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
19 Jul 19.5 °C 51 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
20 Jul 26.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
21 Jul 28.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Jul 30.7 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Jul 30.4 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Jul 30.5 °C 30 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Jul 27.4 °C 55 % 20 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 13
26 Jul 31.0 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Jul 23.1 °C 56 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
28 Jul after 12.7 °C 68 % 24 km/h 1.1 mm Low 10

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 5.0, a minimum humidity of 58% and 9 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 6.

FWI at the start 5.0
Minimum humidity 58 %
Days without rain 9
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Srednekolymsky Ulus fire, August 2020
5,566 ha 4 days FWI 13.0 Min. humidity 60 % 12 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.5 mm on 8 Aug.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 6. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

1.1 mmfirst rain
28 Julthe day after it ended
47km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 27 Jul, and on 28 Jul 1.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 2019.
  • 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.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2020
After · 3 Aug 2020

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 · 977Every 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 Srednekolymsky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 July 2020 and 27 July 2020: 11 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 11,004 hectares (110.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Srednekolymsky Ulus (10,876 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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.

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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 977 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.