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Zeysky District fire, June 2023 Zeysky District

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2023, 17:54 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2023 in Zeysky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,561 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 54th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 491 with a page). Number 39 in Russia in 2023, of 450.

Burnt area
22,561ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
29 Jun 2023 – 19 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
29 Jun
2023
Heat detections
1,370
in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
553MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun19 Jul
19 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jun 2023 · 28 MW · 18 30 Jun 2023 · 641 MW · 129 1 Jul 2023 · 339 MW · 47 2 Jul 2023 · 221 MW · 44 3 Jul 2023 · 199 MW · 38 4 Jul 2023 · 532 MW · 86 5 Jul 2023 · 1,084 MW · 193 6 Jul 2023 · 1,572 MW · 147 7 Jul 2023 · 2,403 MW · 200 8 Jul 2023 · 1,183 MW · 120 9 Jul 2023 · 403 MW · 39 10 Jul 2023 · 827 MW · 86 11 Jul 2023 · 491 MW · 63 12 Jul 2023 · 692 MW · 47 13 Jul 2023 · 83 MW · 20 14 Jul 2023 · 52 MW · 13 16 Jul 2023 · 3 MW · 2 17 Jul 2023 · 39 MW · 10 18 Jul 2023 · 165 MW · 34 19 Jul 2023 · 99 MW · 34
29 Jun 3 Jul 7 Jul 11 Jul 16 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
45km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.0 mm on 20 Jul.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (226 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
    22,503 ha reached on 29 Jun
    0.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Jun 26.6 °C 54 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
30 Jun 27.0 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
1 Jul 28.4 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
2 Jul 32.0 °C 28 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
3 Jul 33.8 °C 26 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Jul 33.2 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Jul 31.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Jul 29.4 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Jul 32.5 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
8 Jul 31.4 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 18
9 Jul 29.1 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Jul 26.7 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Jul 30.4 °C 20 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Jul 32.6 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Jul 30.9 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Jul 31.4 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Jul 29.9 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
16 Jul 29.3 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Jul 31.2 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Jul 33.3 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Jul 31.4 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul after 26.2 °C 58 % 38 km/h 9.0 mm Very low 1

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 11.6, a minimum humidity of 54% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 9.

FWI at the start 11.6
Minimum humidity 54 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Mazanovsky District fire, July 2024
5,660 ha 7 days FWI 9.3 Min. humidity 52 % 248 km away, in 2024

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.0 mm on 15 Jul.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 9. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

9.0 mmfirst rain
20 Julthe day after it ended
45km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 19 Jul, and on 20 Jul 9.0 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 22 Jun 2023
After · 26 Jul 2023

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 8 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 340 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 162: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak340 µg/m³
Days over the guideline20 days
PM10486 µg/m³
Optical depth3.77
27 Jun3 Jul9 Jul15 Jul21 Jul
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 1,370Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 June 2023 and 19 July 2023: 21 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 22,561 hectares (225.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zeysky District (22,503 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 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 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,370 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 2025, 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.