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Tisulsky District fire, May 2021 Tisulsky District, Тяжинский район

Out · last detection 12 May 2021, 20:37 UTC

The fire started on 5 May 2021 in Tisulsky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,622 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Kemerovo Oblast since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 315 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Burnt area
5,622ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
5 May 2021 – 12 May 2021
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 May
2021
Heat detections
235
in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
283MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 May12 May
12 May 2021

How it evolved, day by day

5 May 2021 · 1 MW · 1 6 May 2021 · 533 MW · 42 7 May 2021 · 1,590 MW · 168 8 May 2021 · 7 MW · 1 9 May 2021 · 1 MW · 1 10 May 2021 · 29 MW · 3 11 May 2021 · 45 MW · 8 12 May 2021 · 58 MW · 11
5 May 7 May 9 May 11 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

25°high
61km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 15 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 3.6% of the area of London (56 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. Tisulsky District where it started
    4,566 ha reached on 5 May
    0.6 %
  2. 1,088 ha reached on 7 May
    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 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)
5 May 13.1 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
6 May 25.3 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
7 May 22.4 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
8 May 15.4 °C 24 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 May 9.4 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
10 May 15.6 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm Low 9
11 May 20.2 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
12 May 20.8 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
13 May after 21.8 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 May after 14.3 °C 31 % 53 km/h 0.3 mm High 21
15 May after 20.3 °C 30 % 66 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 19

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 3.2, a minimum humidity of 33% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 6.

FWI at the start 3.2
Minimum humidity 33 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Tisulsky District fire, May 2016
3,024 ha 3 days FWI 0.6 Min. humidity 23 % 5 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.5 mm on 7 May.

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

1.0 mmfirst rain
15 May3 days after it ended
61km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 12 May, and on 15 May 1.0 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 2016.
  • 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 · 28 Apr 2021
After · 19 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 · 235Every 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 Tisulsky District fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 May 2021 to 12 May 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 May 2021 to 8 May 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,622 hectares (56.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tisulsky District (4,566 ha, 0.6 %); Тяжинский район (1,088 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 May 2021 → 12 May 2021.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 May 2021 to 8 May 2021. 235 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.