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Tomponsky Ulus fire, 12 July 2020 Tomponsky Ulus

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2020, 03:45 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2020 in Tomponsky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 38,656 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 112th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 25 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tomponsky Ulus · 2020Tomponsky Ulus · 2021Tomponsky Ulus · 2018Tomponsky Ulus · 2020

Burnt area
38,656ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
12 Jul 2020 – 12 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Jul
2020
Heat detections
5,897
in a single hotspot: 273 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul12 Aug
12 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2020 · 1,564 MW · 67 13 Jul 2020 · 408 MW · 53 14 Jul 2020 · 23 MW · 10 15 Jul 2020 · 1,370 MW · 191 16 Jul 2020 · 1,450 MW · 209 17 Jul 2020 · 1,448 MW · 189 18 Jul 2020 · 2,677 MW · 215 20 Jul 2020 · 31 MW · 11 21 Jul 2020 · 61 MW · 22 22 Jul 2020 · 785 MW · 88 23 Jul 2020 · 1,286 MW · 159 24 Jul 2020 · 1,045 MW · 165 25 Jul 2020 · 459 MW · 77 26 Jul 2020 · 2 MW · 3 27 Jul 2020 · 143 MW · 16 29 Jul 2020 · 9 MW · 6 30 Jul 2020 · 621 MW · 140 31 Jul 2020 · 2,593 MW · 330 1 Aug 2020 · 5,441 MW · 660 2 Aug 2020 · 3,838 MW · 584 3 Aug 2020 · 1,458 MW · 220 4 Aug 2020 · 2,068 MW · 560 5 Aug 2020 · 3,571 MW · 561 6 Aug 2020 · 1,930 MW · 454 7 Aug 2020 · 1,166 MW · 313 8 Aug 2020 · 2,005 MW · 313 9 Aug 2020 · 688 MW · 202 10 Aug 2020 · 333 MW · 44 11 Aug 2020 · 51 MW · 26 12 Aug 2020 · 7 MW · 2
12 Jul 17 Jul 23 Jul 29 Jul 1 Aug 3 Aug 8 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

30°high
47km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 13 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 24% of the area of London (387 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
    37,595 ha
    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)
10 Jul 24.0 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
11 Jul 24.7 °C 43 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
12 Jul 27.6 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
13 Jul 28.7 °C 45 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
14 Jul 25.7 °C 59 % 34 km/h 11.7 mm Very low 1
15 Jul 25.3 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
16 Jul 26.2 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
17 Jul 28.8 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
18 Jul 29.4 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
19 Jul 23.1 °C 76 % 31 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 0
20 Jul 29.5 °C 50 % 27 km/h 5.4 mm Very low 1
21 Jul 28.2 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
22 Jul 25.7 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
23 Jul 25.7 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
24 Jul 27.8 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
25 Jul 29.6 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
26 Jul 24.0 °C 39 % 40 km/h 5.5 mm Very low 2
27 Jul 22.6 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
28 Jul 19.0 °C 61 % 17 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 2
29 Jul 21.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
30 Jul 21.4 °C 27 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
31 Jul 24.0 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
1 Aug 24.6 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Aug 25.4 °C 27 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
3 Aug 24.6 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
4 Aug 24.0 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
5 Aug 24.2 °C 31 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Aug 23.8 °C 33 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Aug 23.9 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
8 Aug 23.8 °C 35 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
9 Aug 23.8 °C 41 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
10 Aug 23.0 °C 44 % 36 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 3
11 Aug 16.8 °C 76 % 20 km/h 5.4 mm Very low 0
12 Aug 17.6 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
13 Aug after 13.5 °C 62 % 46 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2020
After · 19 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 · 5,897Every 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 12 July 2020 and 12 August 2020: 32 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 38,656 hectares (386.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tomponsky Ulus (37,595 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 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 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.

Report an error
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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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5,897 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.