How long did the Ust-Maysky Ulus fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 May 2018 to 18 June 2018 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 May 2018 to 11 June 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,977 hectares (199.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ust-Maysky Ulus (19,612 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 57 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.

RU · Russia · 2018-05-26 → 2018-06-18

Ust-Maysky Ulus fire, May 2018 Ust-Maysky Ulus

Out · last detection 18 Jun 2018, 16:29 UTC

The fire started on 26 May 2018 in Ust-Maysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,977 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 274th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 58 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ust-Maysky Ulus · 2018 Ust-Maysky Ulus · 2022 Ust-Maysky Ulus · 2020 Ust-Maysky Ulus · 2023

Burnt area: 19,977ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 26 May 2018 – 18 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 26 May; 2018
Heat detections: 1,644; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 425MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 May18 Jun

Play back 18 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

26 May 30 May 2 Jun 4 Jun 5 Jun 10 Jun 15 Jun 18 Jun

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

57km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 22 Jun.

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 13% of the area of London (200 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-Maysky Ulus where it started

19,612 ha reached on 26 May

0.2 %

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)
26 May	26.3 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
27 May	25.2 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
28 May	28.0 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 May	18.6 °C	32 %	52 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 12
30 May	13.5 °C	35 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
31 May	19.4 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
1 Jun	20.8 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
2 Jun	20.6 °C	20 %	57 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27
3 Jun	18.3 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
4 Jun	22.3 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Jun	25.4 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
6 Jun	19.1 °C	50 %	29 km/h	5.2 mm	Very low 2
7 Jun	21.7 °C	28 %	46 km/h	2.4 mm	Very low 5
8 Jun	25.1 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
9 Jun	24.4 °C	19 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
10 Jun	12.9 °C	58 %	52 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 7
11 Jun	17.0 °C	31 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
12 Jun	11.0 °C	58 %	46 km/h	3.7 mm	Very low 2
13 Jun	14.8 °C	50 %	42 km/h	0.5 mm	Very low 5
14 Jun	13.6 °C	58 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
15 Jun	18.4 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Jun	23.3 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
17 Jun	25.4 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Jun	21.8 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Jun after	20.8 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
20 Jun after	18.5 °C	50 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 16
21 Jun after	16.2 °C	57 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 14
22 Jun after	15.1 °C	67 %	33 km/h	1.2 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 May 2018

After · 25 Jun 2018

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 · 1,644Every 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

All fires in Russia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ust-Maysky Ulus fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 May 2018 to 18 June 2018 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 May 2018 to 11 June 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,977 hectares (199.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ust-Maysky Ulus (19,612 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 57 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 June 2018 → 18 June 2018.
25 October 2026 Start date: 31 May 2018 → 26 May 2018.

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.

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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?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 May 2018 to 11 June 2018. 1,644 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.

Where it burned