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Srednekolymsky Ulus fire, 11 July 2026 Srednekolymsky Ulus, Nizhnekolymsky Ulus

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2026, 19:25 UTC

The fire started on 11 July 2026 in Srednekolymsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 48,763 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 24 in Russia in 2026, of 420.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
48,763ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
11 Jul 2026 – 3 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
11 Jul
2026
Heat detections
5,775
in a single hotspot: 740 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
5.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jul3 Aug
3 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 1 12 Jul 2026 · 45 MW · 10 13 Jul 2026 · 482 MW · 35 14 Jul 2026 · 88 MW · 7 15 Jul 2026 · 1,210 MW · 69 16 Jul 2026 · 2,025 MW · 78 17 Jul 2026 · 1,215 MW · 115 18 Jul 2026 · 2,098 MW · 141 19 Jul 2026 · 3,365 MW · 231 20 Jul 2026 · 2,453 MW · 165 21 Jul 2026 · 3,788 MW · 267 22 Jul 2026 · 6,513 MW · 488 23 Jul 2026 · 18,733 MW · 852 24 Jul 2026 · 35,224 MW · 861 25 Jul 2026 · 14,021 MW · 364 26 Jul 2026 · 1,476 MW · 215 27 Jul 2026 · 6,808 MW · 390 30 Jul 2026 · 141 MW · 47 1 Aug 2026 · 5 MW · 2 2 Aug 2026 · 4,166 MW · 349 3 Aug 2026 · 8,956 MW · 1088
11 Jul 16 Jul 24 Jul 3 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
53km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.0 mm on 4 Aug.

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 31% of the area of London (488 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
    45,090 ha reached on 11 Jul
    0.4 %
  2. 5,474 ha reached on 20 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 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)
11 Jul 6.9 °C 61 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
12 Jul 9.5 °C 56 % 29 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 2
13 Jul 14.5 °C 47 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
14 Jul 12.7 °C 67 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 4
15 Jul 20.3 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
16 Jul 21.7 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Low 7
17 Jul 20.9 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
18 Jul 24.9 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Jul 24.6 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Jul 24.6 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Jul 23.0 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jul 24.5 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Jul 22.9 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Jul 28.3 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Jul 23.0 °C 48 % 44 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 18
26 Jul 13.2 °C 56 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
27 Jul 19.4 °C 45 % 41 km/h 3.4 mm Moderate 17
28 Jul 17.6 °C 73 % 30 km/h 6.1 mm Very low 0
29 Jul 11.6 °C 72 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 1
30 Jul 11.4 °C 61 % 21 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 2
31 Jul 13.3 °C 73 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 3
1 Aug 7.5 °C 59 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
2 Aug 14.5 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
3 Aug 21.5 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Aug after 17.0 °C 63 % 54 km/h 9.0 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jul 2026
After · 10 Aug 2026

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 2026 the air beside the fire reached 229 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 104: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak229 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10233 µg/m³
Optical depth3.56
14 Jul19 Jul24 Jul29 Jul3 Aug
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 · 5,775Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 July 2026 to 3 August 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2026 to 3 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 48,763 hectares (487.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Srednekolymsky Ulus (45,090 ha, 0.4 %); Nizhnekolymsky Ulus (5,474 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 53 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.

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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 16 July 2026 → 11 July 2026.
  2. Start date: 18 July 2026 → 16 July 2026.

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
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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2026 to 3 August 2026. 5,775 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.