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Tomponsky Ulus fire, 18 June 2019 Tomponsky Ulus

Out · last detection 1 Jul 2019, 04:35 UTC

The fire started on 18 June 2019 in Tomponsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,900 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 249th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 59 in Russia in 2019, of 610.

Compare with…
Burnt area
21,900ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
18 Jun 2019 – 1 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jun
2019
Heat detections
1,747
in a single hotspot: 195 MW
Danger at start
13
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jun1 Jul
1 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jun 2019 · 3,811 MW · 305 19 Jun 2019 · 5,684 MW · 349 20 Jun 2019 · 614 MW · 58 21 Jun 2019 · 1 MW · 1 22 Jun 2019 · 266 MW · 33 23 Jun 2019 · 132 MW · 15 24 Jun 2019 · 1,200 MW · 85 25 Jun 2019 · 148 MW · 28 27 Jun 2019 · 1,458 MW · 87 28 Jun 2019 · 1,705 MW · 233 29 Jun 2019 · 1,758 MW · 153 30 Jun 2019 · 1,556 MW · 197 1 Jul 2019 · 5,169 MW · 203
18 Jun 19 Jun 20 Jun 22 Jun 24 Jun 27 Jun 29 Jun 1 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

28°high
47km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.3 mm on 2 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 14% of the area of London (219 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. Tomponsky Ulus where it started
    21,496 ha
    0.2 %

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)
18 Jun 26.6 °C 33 % 37 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 13
19 Jun 25.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Jun 27.2 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
21 Jun 24.5 °C 43 % 28 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 5
22 Jun 25.0 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Low 11
23 Jun 21.9 °C 54 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
24 Jun 23.0 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
25 Jun 20.9 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
26 Jun 22.1 °C 51 % 19 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
27 Jun 26.2 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
28 Jun 28.1 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Jun 26.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Jun 23.3 °C 39 % 47 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
1 Jul 25.7 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Jul after 17.9 °C 64 % 41 km/h 11.3 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jun 2019
After · 8 Jul 2019

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 · 1,747Every 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 Tomponsky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 June 2019 and 1 July 2019: 14 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 21,900 hectares (219.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tomponsky Ulus (21,496 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 47 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 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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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. 1,747 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.