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RU · Russia · –

Zeysky District fire, 4 May 2018 Zeysky District

Out · last detection 9 May 2018, 05:10 UTC

The fire started on 4 May 2018 in Zeysky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,339 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 270th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 491 with a page). Number 283 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Burnt area
5,339ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
4 May 2018 – 9 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 May
2018
Heat detections
200
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
549MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 May9 May
9 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 May 2018 · 113 MW · 45 5 May 2018 · 2,643 MW · 117 6 May 2018 · 2 MW · 1 7 May 2018 · 223 MW · 5 8 May 2018 · 150 MW · 12 9 May 2018 · 164 MW · 20
5 May 8 May

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
52km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 10 May.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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. Zeysky District where it started
    5,236 ha reached on 4 May
    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 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)

Started with Very dry air: 5.9 % of the area in Russia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
4 May 22.1 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 May 19.2 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 May 11.0 °C 30 % 44 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 4
7 May 18.5 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
8 May 22.8 °C 15 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
9 May 24.1 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 May after 16.6 °C 32 % 42 km/h 4.6 mm Very low 3

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 22.8, a minimum humidity of 8% and 8 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 16.

FWI at the start 22.8
Minimum humidity 8 %
Days without rain 8
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Mazanovsky District fire, May 2016
3,135 ha 2 days FWI 23.3 Min. humidity 8 % 208 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.8 mm on 11 May.

What happened to them

4 days
median duration
5,864 ha
median area
25 %
went past 10,000 ha
12.2 mm
rain at the end (median; 14 of 16 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (5,339 ha against a median of 5,864 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 4 days.

In 2 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 12.2 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

4.6 mmfirst rain
10 Maythe day after it ended
52km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 May, and on 10 May 4.6 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 16, with a median of 12.2 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Apr 2018
After · 16 May 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.

Detections table · 200Every 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 Zeysky District fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 May 2018 to 9 May 2018 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 May 2018 to 5 May 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,339 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zeysky District (5,236 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 24.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 16. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 5,864 ha; 25 % went past 10,000 ha. In 2 of 16, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 12.2 mm.

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: 5 May 2018 → 9 May 2018.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 4 May 2018 to 5 May 2018. 200 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 (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.