Skip to content
worldfires
RU · Russia · –

Turukhansky District fire, 11 July 2016 Turukhansky District

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2016, 20:05 UTC

The fire started on 11 July 2016 in Turukhansky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,754 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 133th largest in Krasnoyarsk Krai since 2016 (of 538 with a page). Number 172 in Russia in 2016, of 692.

Compare with…
Burnt area
11,754ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
11 Jul 2016 – 24 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Jul
2016
Heat detections
1,300
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
416MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jul24 Jul
24 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jul 2016 · 261 MW · 11 12 Jul 2016 · 110 MW · 43 13 Jul 2016 · 431 MW · 66 14 Jul 2016 · 257 MW · 64 15 Jul 2016 · 169 MW · 36 16 Jul 2016 · 238 MW · 70 17 Jul 2016 · 1,012 MW · 188 18 Jul 2016 · 878 MW · 174 19 Jul 2016 · 253 MW · 111 20 Jul 2016 · 1,099 MW · 197 21 Jul 2016 · 720 MW · 174 22 Jul 2016 · 190 MW · 95 23 Jul 2016 · 128 MW · 42 24 Jul 2016 · 72 MW · 29
11 Jul 14 Jul 17 Jul 20 Jul 23 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

29°high
50km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 25 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 7.4% of the area of London (118 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. Turukhansky District where it started
    11,172 ha reached on 11 Jul
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
6 Jul 25.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 Jul 23.3 °C 55 % 38 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 3
8 Jul 23.9 °C 73 % 25 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 1
9 Jul 26.2 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
10 Jul 27.5 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
11 Jul 25.2 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Jul 24.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Jul 26.1 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Jul 27.6 °C 32 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
15 Jul 27.0 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Jul 26.0 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Jul 27.3 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Jul 27.9 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Jul 28.7 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul 28.8 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
21 Jul 28.7 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Jul 29.2 °C 34 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Jul 27.8 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
24 Jul 25.6 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 16
25 Jul after 19.6 °C 75 % 21 km/h 6.7 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 17.2, a minimum humidity of 31% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 1.

FWI at the start 17.2
Minimum humidity 31 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Turukhansky District fire, June 2016
3,648 ha 6 days FWI 17.6 Min. humidity 29 % 95 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 1 Jul.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. 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

6.7 mmfirst rain
25 Julthe day after it ended
50km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 24 Jul, and on 25 Jul 6.7 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 · 4 Jul 2016
After · 31 Jul 2016

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 · 1,300Every 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 Turukhansky District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 July 2016 and 24 July 2016: 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 11,754 hectares (117.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Turukhansky District (11,172 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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. 1,300 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 2015, 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.