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Ust-Aldansky Ulus fire, 14 July 2020 Ust-Aldansky Ulus

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2020, 17:25 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2020 in Ust-Aldansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 41 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,815 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 151th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 35 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ust-Aldansky Ulus · 2017Ust-Aldansky Ulus · 2020Ust-Aldansky Ulus · 2019Ust-Aldansky Ulus · 2017

Burnt area
30,815ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
41days
14 Jul 2020 – 23 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Jul
2020
Heat detections
5,946
in a single hotspot: 686 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul23 Aug
23 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2020 · 1 MW · 1 15 Jul 2020 · 83 MW · 25 16 Jul 2020 · 156 MW · 53 17 Jul 2020 · 297 MW · 58 18 Jul 2020 · 135 MW · 11 20 Jul 2020 · 71 MW · 35 21 Jul 2020 · 3,460 MW · 167 22 Jul 2020 · 393 MW · 62 23 Jul 2020 · 6,341 MW · 506 24 Jul 2020 · 5,685 MW · 409 25 Jul 2020 · 21,193 MW · 362 26 Jul 2020 · 6 MW · 3 28 Jul 2020 · 8 MW · 8 29 Jul 2020 · 27 MW · 12 30 Jul 2020 · 604 MW · 226 31 Jul 2020 · 4,240 MW · 634 1 Aug 2020 · 5,027 MW · 547 2 Aug 2020 · 1,898 MW · 372 3 Aug 2020 · 383 MW · 152 4 Aug 2020 · 777 MW · 180 5 Aug 2020 · 940 MW · 324 6 Aug 2020 · 751 MW · 230 7 Aug 2020 · 923 MW · 276 8 Aug 2020 · 781 MW · 255 9 Aug 2020 · 3,735 MW · 358 12 Aug 2020 · 6 MW · 6 13 Aug 2020 · 6 MW · 3 14 Aug 2020 · 222 MW · 68 15 Aug 2020 · 465 MW · 114 16 Aug 2020 · 80 MW · 17 17 Aug 2020 · 179 MW · 34 18 Aug 2020 · 434 MW · 127 19 Aug 2020 · 46 MW · 30 20 Aug 2020 · 120 MW · 46 21 Aug 2020 · 343 MW · 87 22 Aug 2020 · 691 MW · 109 23 Aug 2020 · 216 MW · 39
14 Jul 21 Jul 25 Jul 28 Jul 3 Aug 9 Aug 17 Aug 23 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

33°high
65km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 24 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 926 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (308 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. Ust-Aldansky Ulus where it started
    30,815 ha reached on 14 Jul
    1.7 %

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)
14 Jul 30.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Jul 27.9 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Jul 28.4 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
17 Jul 29.8 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
18 Jul 32.6 °C 32 % 42 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 13
19 Jul 25.5 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
20 Jul 31.9 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
21 Jul 27.4 °C 39 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Jul 22.2 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Jul 25.9 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
24 Jul 29.6 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Jul 31.3 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm High 29
26 Jul 24.3 °C 41 % 36 km/h 9.8 mm Very low 3
27 Jul 27.4 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
28 Jul 25.4 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 14
29 Jul 23.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Jul 24.6 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
31 Jul 25.6 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Aug 27.1 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Aug 27.2 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Aug 26.0 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Aug 26.2 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Aug 25.4 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Aug 25.6 °C 31 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Aug 25.7 °C 34 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Aug 25.7 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
9 Aug 25.7 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
10 Aug 18.6 °C 68 % 21 km/h 4.9 mm Very low 1
11 Aug 19.9 °C 55 % 21 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 4
12 Aug 19.9 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
13 Aug 14.2 °C 34 % 65 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
14 Aug 16.5 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Aug 17.8 °C 36 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Aug 16.8 °C 49 % 19 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 16
17 Aug 18.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
18 Aug 20.2 °C 29 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Aug 19.5 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Aug 18.7 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Aug 18.1 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Aug 17.9 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Aug 16.3 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
24 Aug after 8.0 °C 56 % 32 km/h 5.2 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2020
After · 30 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 · 5,946Every 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 14 July 2020 and 23 August 2020: 41 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 30,815 hectares (308.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ust-Aldansky Ulus (30,815 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5,946 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.