How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2018 and 3 August 2018: 12 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 3,061 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (3,015 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 25.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 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.

RU · Russia · 2018-07-23 → 2018-08-03

Zhigansky Ulus fire, 23 July 2018 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2018, 18:46 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2018 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,061 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1398th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 532 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 3,061ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 23 Jul 2018 – 3 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 23 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 339; in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 284MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul3 Aug

Play back 3 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul 2 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

26°high

35km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.5 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Zhigansky Ulus where it started

3,015 ha

0.0 %

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.

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)
23 Jul	17.4 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Jul	13.3 °C	49 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
25 Jul	16.5 °C	55 %	28 km/h	0.9 mm	Low 6
26 Jul	21.4 °C	30 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
27 Jul	21.8 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
28 Jul	22.5 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
29 Jul	22.5 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
30 Jul	25.9 °C	25 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
31 Jul	22.6 °C	33 %	24 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
1 Aug	21.1 °C	46 %	25 km/h	0.9 mm	Low 9
2 Aug	22.3 °C	50 %	19 km/h	1.2 mm	Low 6
3 Aug	22.7 °C	44 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
4 Aug after	20.0 °C	51 %	44 km/h	4.5 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jul 2018

After · 10 Aug 2018

Before After

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 · 339Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Russia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2018 and 3 August 2018: 12 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 3,061 hectares (30.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (3,015 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 25.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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. 339 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.

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.

Where it burned