How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 June 2020 and 16 July 2020: 18 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 71,185 hectares (711.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (67,278 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

RU · Russia · 2020-06-29 → 2020-07-16

Zhigansky Ulus fire, 29 June 2020 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2020, 05:33 UTC

The fire started on 29 June 2020 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 71,185 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 54th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 8 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zhigansky Ulus · 2019

Burnt area: 71,185ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 29 Jun 2020 – 16 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Jun; 2020
Heat detections: 6,686; in a single hotspot: 734 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 8.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jun16 Jul

Play back 16 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jun 2 Jul 5 Jul 9 Jul 12 Jul 15 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

63km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 17 Jul.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 633 ha in 2018, 19 ha in 2019.

19 ha Zhigansky Ulus fire, July 2019 169,479 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 45% of the area of London (712 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

67,278 ha

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.

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	29.1 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
30 Jun	31.2 °C	35 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Jul	32.5 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
2 Jul	25.5 °C	29 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Jul	18.4 °C	49 %	63 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 15
4 Jul	18.0 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Jul	17.9 °C	33 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
6 Jul	14.2 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
7 Jul	17.8 °C	46 %	23 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 4
8 Jul	21.5 °C	37 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
9 Jul	24.4 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
10 Jul	26.4 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
11 Jul	26.5 °C	38 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Jul	28.2 °C	39 %	33 km/h	4.4 mm	Low 6
13 Jul	23.6 °C	49 %	20 km/h	5.3 mm	Very low 2
14 Jul	26.8 °C	34 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
15 Jul	27.2 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
16 Jul	27.3 °C	42 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
17 Jul after	24.1 °C	55 %	34 km/h	2.9 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jun 2020

After · 23 Jul 2020

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 · 6,686Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 June 2020 and 16 July 2020: 18 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 71,185 hectares (711.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (67,278 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6,686 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