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Ust-Aldansky Ulus fire, 23 July 2019 Ust-Aldansky Ulus

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2019, 04:35 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2019 in Ust-Aldansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,882 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 428th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 140 in Russia in 2019, of 613.

Burnt area
11,882ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
23 Jul 2019 – 2 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Jul
2019
Heat detections
2,062
in a single hotspot: 367 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
20.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul2 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

23242526272829303112

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
35km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.3 mm on 3 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 402 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Ust-Aldansky Ulus where it started
    11,880 ha reached on 23 Jul
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
23 Jul 24.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
24 Jul 28.5 °C 15 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
25 Jul 30.2 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Jul 31.8 °C 20 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jul 30.1 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Jul 30.0 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Jul 29.9 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
30 Jul 17.1 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
31 Jul 20.0 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
1 Aug 21.0 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
2 Aug 21.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
3 Aug after 16.2 °C 55 % 34 km/h 12.3 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2019
After · 9 Aug 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 · 2,062Every 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 Ust-Aldansky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2019 and 2 August 2019: 11 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 11,882 hectares (118.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ust-Aldansky Ulus (11,880 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.