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Zhigansky Ulus fire, 23 July 2018 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2018, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2018 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,634 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 307th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 67 in Russia in 2018, of 540.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zhigansky Ulus · 2020Zhigansky Ulus · 2020Zhigansky Ulus · 2020Zhigansky Ulus · 2020

Burnt area
17,634ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
23 Jul 2018 – 14 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Jul
2018
Heat detections
3,014
in a single hotspot: 343 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul14 Aug
14 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 2018 · 180 MW · 15 24 Jul 2018 · 6 MW · 1 25 Jul 2018 · 13 MW · 6 26 Jul 2018 · 361 MW · 34 27 Jul 2018 · 945 MW · 96 28 Jul 2018 · 662 MW · 59 29 Jul 2018 · 384 MW · 40 30 Jul 2018 · 1,137 MW · 107 31 Jul 2018 · 239 MW · 31 1 Aug 2018 · 245 MW · 30 2 Aug 2018 · 882 MW · 104 3 Aug 2018 · 1,202 MW · 240 5 Aug 2018 · 6 MW · 4 6 Aug 2018 · 1,002 MW · 137 7 Aug 2018 · 1,862 MW · 252 8 Aug 2018 · 1,691 MW · 362 9 Aug 2018 · 955 MW · 171 10 Aug 2018 · 1 MW · 1 11 Aug 2018 · 96 MW · 7 12 Aug 2018 · 367 MW · 93 13 Aug 2018 · 3,550 MW · 508 14 Aug 2018 · 13,027 MW · 606
23 Jul 27 Jul 31 Jul 5 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 14 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
48km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 16 Aug.

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 11% of the area of London (176 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. Zhigansky Ulus where it started
    17,104 ha
    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.

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)
19 Jul 25.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
20 Jul 23.2 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 18
21 Jul 12.9 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 11
22 Jul 15.5 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Jul 18.3 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Jul 13.8 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
25 Jul 17.0 °C 54 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
26 Jul 21.6 °C 33 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
27 Jul 21.2 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
28 Jul 22.6 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
29 Jul 22.6 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Jul 26.0 °C 24 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
31 Jul 22.9 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
1 Aug 21.7 °C 44 % 20 km/h 1.8 mm Low 6
2 Aug 23.1 °C 48 % 20 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 3
3 Aug 23.3 °C 43 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
4 Aug 21.1 °C 53 % 40 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 4
5 Aug 18.8 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
6 Aug 22.0 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Aug 24.2 °C 39 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
8 Aug 24.9 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
9 Aug 23.2 °C 48 % 23 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 13
10 Aug 17.3 °C 75 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Low 9
11 Aug 19.1 °C 52 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
12 Aug 20.1 °C 50 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
13 Aug 22.8 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Aug 24.8 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
15 Aug after 24.1 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Aug after 20.6 °C 62 % 19 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2018
After · 21 Aug 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 · 3,014Every 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 Zhigansky Ulus fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 July 2018 and 14 August 2018: 23 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 17,634 hectares (176.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (17,104 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, 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 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 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. 3,014 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.