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Vilyuysky Ulus fire, 18 July 2017 Vilyuysky Ulus

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2017, 05:39 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2017 in Vilyuysky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,319 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 125th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 8 in Russia in 2017, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vilyuysky Ulus · 2018Zhigansky Ulus · 2021Vilyuysky Ulus · 2018Vilyuysky Ulus · 2018

Burnt area
36,319ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
18 Jul 2017 – 14 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Jul
2017
Heat detections
5,703
in a single hotspot: 413 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
2.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul14 Aug
14 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2017 · 1,065 MW · 14 19 Jul 2017 · 25 MW · 3 20 Jul 2017 · 293 MW · 34 21 Jul 2017 · 323 MW · 46 22 Jul 2017 · 1,914 MW · 96 23 Jul 2017 · 751 MW · 59 25 Jul 2017 · 99 MW · 26 26 Jul 2017 · 532 MW · 66 27 Jul 2017 · 54 MW · 37 28 Jul 2017 · 606 MW · 148 29 Jul 2017 · 1,794 MW · 296 30 Jul 2017 · 4,243 MW · 217 31 Jul 2017 · 417 MW · 35 1 Aug 2017 · 81 MW · 29 2 Aug 2017 · 2,198 MW · 411 3 Aug 2017 · 295 MW · 83 4 Aug 2017 · 3,751 MW · 653 5 Aug 2017 · 17,662 MW · 957 6 Aug 2017 · 1,633 MW · 579 7 Aug 2017 · 15,942 MW · 1026 8 Aug 2017 · 3,095 MW · 485 9 Aug 2017 · 808 MW · 253 10 Aug 2017 · 989 MW · 116 13 Aug 2017 · 3 MW · 3 14 Aug 2017 · 215 MW · 31
18 Jul 22 Jul 27 Jul 31 Jul 4 Aug 5 Aug 8 Aug 14 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

27°high
51km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 15 Aug.

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 23% of the area of London (363 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
    36,711 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.7 %

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)
18 Jul 21.6 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
19 Jul 18.8 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
20 Jul 13.6 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Jul 14.8 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jul 17.1 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
23 Jul 22.6 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 12
24 Jul 15.4 °C 42 % 37 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
25 Jul 19.4 °C 40 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
26 Jul 23.4 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.9 mm Low 9
27 Jul 13.7 °C 54 % 33 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 2
28 Jul 13.6 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
29 Jul 18.4 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
30 Jul 19.4 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
31 Jul 24.8 °C 43 % 43 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 5
1 Aug 20.0 °C 42 % 42 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 5
2 Aug 25.5 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Aug 22.5 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
4 Aug 18.0 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
5 Aug 23.0 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Aug 24.4 °C 39 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
7 Aug 26.4 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
8 Aug 27.3 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
9 Aug 26.7 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
10 Aug 24.1 °C 57 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
11 Aug 17.2 °C 82 % 25 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 4
12 Aug 24.1 °C 68 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm Low 6
13 Aug 27.4 °C 40 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
14 Aug 27.4 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Aug after 27.7 °C 57 % 38 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2017
After · 21 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 · 5,703Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 July 2017 to 14 August 2017 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2017 to 10 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 36,319 hectares (363.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Vilyuysky Ulus (36,711 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 August 2017 → 14 August 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.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2017 to 10 August 2017. 5,703 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.