How long did the Vilyuysky Ulus fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2017 to 15 August 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2017 to 9 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,414 hectares (104.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kobyaysky Ulus (6,269 ha, 0.1 %); Vilyuysky Ulus (3,726 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 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.

RU · Russia · 2017-07-26 → 2017-08-15

Vilyuysky Ulus fire, 26 July 2017 Kobyaysky Ulus, Vilyuysky Ulus

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2017, 03:39 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2017 in Vilyuysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,414 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 490th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 61 in Russia in 2017, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vilyuysky Ulus · 2017 Vilyuysky Ulus · 2017

Burnt area: 10,414ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 26 Jul 2017 – 15 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 26 Jul; 2017
Heat detections: 2,564; in a single hotspot: 185 MW
Danger at start: 14; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul15 Aug

Play back 15 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jul 29 Jul 1 Aug 4 Aug 7 Aug 12 Aug 15 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

32°high

41km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.5 mm on 22 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 6.6% of the area of London (104 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

Kobyaysky Ulus

6,269 ha reached on 28 Jul

0.1 %
Vilyuysky Ulus where it started

3,726 ha reached on 26 Jul

0.1 %

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)
26 Jul	24.5 °C	34 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
27 Jul	18.2 °C	56 %	35 km/h	2.6 mm	Very low 4
28 Jul	16.1 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
29 Jul	18.7 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
30 Jul	22.2 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
31 Jul	28.5 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Aug	22.2 °C	44 %	41 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 8
2 Aug	26.9 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
3 Aug	29.0 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
4 Aug	20.0 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Aug	23.8 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
6 Aug	26.6 °C	28 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Aug	28.0 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
8 Aug	29.8 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Aug	27.1 °C	45 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
10 Aug	20.0 °C	76 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
11 Aug	19.8 °C	89 %	28 km/h	6.7 mm	Very low 0
12 Aug	25.5 °C	62 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 2
13 Aug	27.9 °C	44 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
14 Aug	29.4 °C	42 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
15 Aug	32.3 °C	43 %	32 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 10
16 Aug after	20.5 °C	57 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 12
17 Aug after	17.2 °C	50 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 11
18 Aug after	20.0 °C	45 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
19 Aug after	20.9 °C	46 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 14
20 Aug after	18.6 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
21 Aug after	19.6 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
22 Aug after	16.2 °C	69 %	29 km/h	8.5 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jul 2017

After · 22 Aug 2017

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 · 2,564Every 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 Vilyuysky Ulus fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 July 2017 to 15 August 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2017 to 9 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,414 hectares (104.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kobyaysky Ulus (6,269 ha, 0.1 %); Vilyuysky Ulus (3,726 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 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.

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: 9 August 2017 → 15 August 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 28 July 2017 → 26 July 2017.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 July 2017 to 9 August 2017. 2,564 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.

Where it burned