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Ust-Maysky Ulus fire, 26 June 2021 Ust-Maysky Ulus

Out · last detection 5 Jul 2021, 04:53 UTC

The fire started on 26 June 2021 in Ust-Maysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,317 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1243th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1347 with a page). Number 528 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Burnt area
3,317ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
26 Jun 2021 – 5 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
26 Jun
2021
Heat detections
361
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
284MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jun5 Jul
5 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jun 2021 · 20 MW · 7 27 Jun 2021 · 21 MW · 3 28 Jun 2021 · 70 MW · 15 29 Jun 2021 · 435 MW · 51 30 Jun 2021 · 702 MW · 65 1 Jul 2021 · 466 MW · 46 2 Jul 2021 · 222 MW · 47 3 Jul 2021 · 595 MW · 84 4 Jul 2021 · 81 MW · 10 5 Jul 2021 · 230 MW · 33
26 Jun 28 Jun 30 Jun 2 Jul 4 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

34°high
37km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.7 mm on 6 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 2.1% of the area of London (33 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-Maysky Ulus where it started
    3,164 ha reached on 26 Jun
    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 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 Jun 27.5 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
27 Jun 26.8 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
28 Jun 30.2 °C 31 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
29 Jun 31.7 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Jun 30.6 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Jul 31.5 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Jul 31.7 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Jul 33.8 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Jul 31.7 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
5 Jul 30.9 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Jul after 22.1 °C 69 % 27 km/h 7.7 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 11.1, a minimum humidity of 34% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 34.

FWI at the start 11.1
Minimum humidity 34 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Aldansky Ulus fire, August 2024
3,464 ha 5 days FWI 11.7 Min. humidity 36 % 102 km away, in 2024

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.9 mm on 14 Aug.

What happened to them

13 days
median duration
6,656 ha
median area
35 %
went past 10,000 ha
5.3 mm
rain at the end (median; 32 of 34 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 3,317 ha against a median of 6,656 ha. It lasted 10 days, against 13 days.

In 2 of 34, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.3 mm.

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

7.7 mmfirst rain
6 Julthe day after it ended
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 5 Jul, and on 6 Jul 7.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 32 of 34, with a median of 5.3 mm.

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 2017.
  • 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 · 19 Jun 2021
After · 12 Jul 2021

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 · 361Every 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-Maysky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 June 2021 and 5 July 2021: 10 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 3,317 hectares (33.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ust-Maysky Ulus (3,164 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2017 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 34. Their median duration was 13 days and their median area 6,656 ha; 35 % went past 10,000 ha. In 2 of 34, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.3 mm.

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. 361 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.