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Zeysky District fire, 1 July 2023 Zeysky District

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2023, 17:41 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2023 in Zeysky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 46,707 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 535 with a page). Number 9 in Russia in 2023, of 450.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zeysky District · 2026Zeysky District · 2023Neryungrinsky Municipal District · 2023

Burnt area
46,707ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
1 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Jul
2023
Heat detections
6,044
in a single hotspot: 1,044 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
2.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul25 Jul
25 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2023 · 2 MW · 2 2 Jul 2023 · 132 MW · 39 3 Jul 2023 · 323 MW · 59 4 Jul 2023 · 468 MW · 90 5 Jul 2023 · 841 MW · 142 6 Jul 2023 · 829 MW · 115 7 Jul 2023 · 1,044 MW · 222 8 Jul 2023 · 1,867 MW · 276 9 Jul 2023 · 30,788 MW · 1335 10 Jul 2023 · 2,090 MW · 434 11 Jul 2023 · 1,390 MW · 312 12 Jul 2023 · 2,320 MW · 379 13 Jul 2023 · 3,259 MW · 507 14 Jul 2023 · 1,244 MW · 132 15 Jul 2023 · 2,354 MW · 451 16 Jul 2023 · 1,354 MW · 382 17 Jul 2023 · 1,399 MW · 314 18 Jul 2023 · 3,439 MW · 413 19 Jul 2023 · 3,252 MW · 413 22 Jul 2023 · 1 MW · 1 23 Jul 2023 · 67 MW · 14 24 Jul 2023 · 145 MW · 10 25 Jul 2023 · 2 MW · 2
1 Jul 5 Jul 9 Jul 13 Jul 17 Jul 23 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

32°high
43km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 27 Jul.

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 29% of the area of London (467 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
    47,718 ha reached on 1 Jul
    0.5 %

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 area0.43 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.43 hectares of 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)
1 Jul 27.4 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Low 7
2 Jul 29.8 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.2 mm Low 8
3 Jul 31.1 °C 35 % 23 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 3
4 Jul 32.3 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
5 Jul 30.9 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
6 Jul 30.5 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
7 Jul 29.8 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
8 Jul 28.0 °C 33 % 36 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 5
9 Jul 24.8 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Jul 25.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 Jul 28.0 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Jul 29.0 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Jul 27.1 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Jul 27.5 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Jul 27.0 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Jul 25.6 °C 44 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
17 Jul 28.6 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
18 Jul 29.5 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Jul 27.9 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
20 Jul 18.7 °C 72 % 29 km/h 27.1 mm Very low 0
21 Jul 20.8 °C 47 % 42 km/h 1.4 mm Very low 2
22 Jul 23.5 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
23 Jul 28.1 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
24 Jul 28.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Jul 23.7 °C 44 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
26 Jul after 26.0 °C 39 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
27 Jul after 27.1 °C 40 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jun 2023
After · 1 Aug 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 20 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 1,587 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 691: 46 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,587 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM102,265 µg/m³
Optical depth5.55
293012345678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 6,044Every 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 1 July 2023 to 25 July 2023 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2023 to 19 July 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 46,707 hectares (467.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zeysky District (47,718 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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: 19 July 2023 → 25 July 2023.

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 1 July 2023 to 19 July 2023. 6,044 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.