How long did the Ust-Ilimsky fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 July 2016 and 8 August 2016: 20 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 4,632 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ust-Ilimsky (4,589 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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.

RU · Russia · 2016-07-20 → 2016-08-08

Ust-Ilimsky fire, 20 July 2016 Ust-Ilimsky

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2016, 06:35 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2016 in Ust-Ilimsky, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,632 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 265th largest in Irkutsk Oblast since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 443 in Russia in 2016, of 692.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ust-Ilimsky · 2016 Усть-Кутский район · 2016 Нижнеилимский район · 2016 Ust-Ilimsky · 2016

Burnt area: 4,632ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 20 Jul 2016 – 8 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 20 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 423; in a single hotspot: 54 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 95MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul8 Aug

Play back 8 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 29 Jul 3 Aug 6 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

28°high

48km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.2 mm on 9 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Ust-Ilimsky where it started

4,589 ha

0.1 %

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)
17 Jul	21.8 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
18 Jul	18.2 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
19 Jul	19.2 °C	50 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
20 Jul	24.1 °C	33 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
21 Jul	26.0 °C	31 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
22 Jul	23.4 °C	41 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
23 Jul	25.3 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
24 Jul	26.1 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
25 Jul	25.8 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
26 Jul	28.1 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
27 Jul	27.8 °C	42 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
28 Jul	24.8 °C	58 %	32 km/h	3.8 mm	Very low 3
29 Jul	21.5 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
30 Jul	24.0 °C	43 %	32 km/h	2.1 mm	Low 6
31 Jul	24.3 °C	57 %	35 km/h	2.2 mm	Very low 4
1 Aug	22.3 °C	53 %	48 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 9
2 Aug	19.5 °C	59 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
3 Aug	23.0 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
4 Aug	23.8 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
5 Aug	23.1 °C	46 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
6 Aug	25.2 °C	50 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 17
7 Aug	28.4 °C	33 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
8 Aug	26.6 °C	43 %	17 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 13
9 Aug after	21.6 °C	70 %	24 km/h	10.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jul 2016

After · 15 Aug 2016

Before After

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 · 423Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ust-Ilimsky fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 July 2016 and 8 August 2016: 20 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 4,632 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ust-Ilimsky (4,589 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 423 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.

Where it burned