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Yero'o fire, 29 May 2018 Yero'o

Out · last measured on 4 Jun 2018

The fire started on 29 May 2018 in Yero'o, Mongolia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,202 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Selenge since 2016 (of 17 with a page). The largest in Mongolia in 2018, of 6.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yero'o · 2018Yero'o · 2018Yero'o · 2025Erdene · 2017

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
9,202ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
29 May 2018 – 4 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
29 May
2018
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

30°high
71km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.7 mm on 6 Jun.

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 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Yero'o where it started
    9,126 ha
    1.1 %

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 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)
29 May 25.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
30 May 28.5 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
31 May 29.4 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
1 Jun 30.4 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Jun 12.9 °C 67 % 53 km/h 6.8 mm Very low 0
3 Jun 18.1 °C 28 % 71 km/h 5.0 mm Very low 2
4 Jun 17.6 °C 29 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
5 Jun after 14.0 °C 48 % 47 km/h 0.6 mm Low 6
6 Jun after 13.0 °C 78 % 37 km/h 8.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 May 2018
After · 11 Jun 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mongolia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yero'o fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 May 2018 and 4 June 2018: 7 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 9,202 hectares (92.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yero'o (9,126 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mongolia (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: 105 · 101 · 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 105 · 101.

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. No 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.