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Vilyuysky Ulus fire, 2 July 2017 Vilyuysky Ulus, Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus

Out · last detection 9 Aug 2017, 19:18 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2017 in Vilyuysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 38,828 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 110th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 7 in Russia in 2017, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vilyuysky Ulus · 2021Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus · 2024

Burnt area
38,828ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
2 Jul 2017 – 9 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
2 Jul
2017
Heat detections
4,373
in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul9 Aug
9 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2017 · 39 MW · 13 5 Jul 2017 · 240 MW · 22 6 Jul 2017 · 28 MW · 10 7 Jul 2017 · 704 MW · 133 8 Jul 2017 · 597 MW · 100 9 Jul 2017 · 575 MW · 99 12 Jul 2017 · 38 MW · 8 13 Jul 2017 · 7 MW · 7 14 Jul 2017 · 527 MW · 79 15 Jul 2017 · 6 MW · 2 18 Jul 2017 · 5,169 MW · 352 19 Jul 2017 · 3,467 MW · 364 20 Jul 2017 · 1,709 MW · 202 21 Jul 2017 · 1,402 MW · 204 22 Jul 2017 · 4,381 MW · 296 23 Jul 2017 · 247 MW · 35 25 Jul 2017 · 23 MW · 5 26 Jul 2017 · 823 MW · 93 28 Jul 2017 · 911 MW · 108 29 Jul 2017 · 1,551 MW · 227 30 Jul 2017 · 3,446 MW · 398 31 Jul 2017 · 1,869 MW · 195 1 Aug 2017 · 5 MW · 5 2 Aug 2017 · 94 MW · 35 3 Aug 2017 · 279 MW · 63 4 Aug 2017 · 1,681 MW · 211 5 Aug 2017 · 1,695 MW · 192 6 Aug 2017 · 593 MW · 111 7 Aug 2017 · 4,113 MW · 263 8 Aug 2017 · 1,594 MW · 185 9 Aug 2017 · 3,628 MW · 356
2 Jul 9 Jul 18 Jul 23 Jul 30 Jul 4 Aug 9 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

30°high
55km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.3 mm on 11 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 65 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 25% of the area of London (388 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. Vilyuysky Ulus where it started
    36,603 ha reached on 2 Jul
    0.7 %
  2. Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus
    452 ha reached on 29 Jul
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
2 Jul 25.1 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
3 Jul 22.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.7 mm High 25
4 Jul 22.6 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.7 mm High 25
5 Jul 19.7 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Jul 18.8 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Jul 23.4 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Jul 23.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Jul 26.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Jul 29.1 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
11 Jul 23.6 °C 61 % 47 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
12 Jul 23.7 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Jul 18.2 °C 51 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
14 Jul 22.5 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Jul 22.8 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
16 Jul 20.9 °C 57 % 30 km/h 1.8 mm Low 7
17 Jul 16.8 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
18 Jul 21.4 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Jul 22.0 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul 15.7 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Jul 15.2 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Jul 20.5 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jul 20.4 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
24 Jul 19.3 °C 38 % 37 km/h 3.5 mm Low 6
25 Jul 19.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
26 Jul 24.5 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
27 Jul 19.3 °C 48 % 37 km/h 2.7 mm Low 6
28 Jul 15.9 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
29 Jul 17.2 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 Jul 20.2 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Jul 28.8 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Aug 22.5 °C 34 % 41 km/h 2.6 mm Low 9
2 Aug 26.6 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
3 Aug 27.9 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug 19.1 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Aug 23.5 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Aug 27.2 °C 22 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Aug 28.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug 29.7 °C 27 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug 27.9 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Aug after 19.0 °C 71 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
11 Aug after 19.0 °C 94 % 28 km/h 8.3 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2017
After · 16 Aug 2017

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 · 4,373Every 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 Vilyuysky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 July 2017 and 9 August 2017: 39 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 38,828 hectares (388.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Vilyuysky Ulus (36,603 ha, 0.7 %); Verkhnevilyuysky Ulus (452 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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. 4,373 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 2015, 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.