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Ust-Yansky Ulus fire, 31 July 2019 Ust-Yansky Ulus

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2019, 17:43 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2019 in Ust-Yansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,151 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 368th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 112 in Russia in 2019, of 613.

Burnt area
14,151ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
31 Jul 2019 – 20 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Jul
2019
Heat detections
2,826
in a single hotspot: 431 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
24.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

31123456710111213141516171920

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
42km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 21 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Ust-Yansky Ulus where it started
    13,502 ha reached on 31 Jul
    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)
31 Jul 12.6 °C 59 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
1 Aug 13.4 °C 51 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
2 Aug 16.2 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
3 Aug 17.5 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Aug 17.1 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
5 Aug 18.3 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
6 Aug 16.0 °C 57 % 36 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 2
7 Aug 18.6 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
8 Aug 17.4 °C 53 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm Low 6
9 Aug 17.9 °C 57 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Aug 20.4 °C 47 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
11 Aug 23.1 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 11
12 Aug 24.4 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
13 Aug 21.1 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
14 Aug 21.1 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
15 Aug 19.1 °C 43 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
16 Aug 16.3 °C 58 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
17 Aug 17.3 °C 62 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
18 Aug 16.5 °C 70 % 17 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 2
19 Aug 18.9 °C 58 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
20 Aug 21.3 °C 53 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
21 Aug after 15.9 °C 78 % 18 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2019
After · 27 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 · 2,826Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ust-Yansky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 July 2019 and 20 August 2019: 21 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 14,151 hectares (141.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ust-Yansky Ulus (13,502 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 24.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, 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

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.