How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 July 2020 and 10 August 2020: 13 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 15,983 hectares (159.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (15,390 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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 · 2020-07-29 → 2020-08-10

Zhigansky Ulus fire, 29 July 2020 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2020, 05:46 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2020 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,983 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 333th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 85 in Russia in 2020, of 593.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zhigansky Ulus · 2018 Zhigansky Ulus · 2020 Zhigansky Ulus · 2020 Zhigansky Ulus · 2020

Burnt area: 15,983ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 29 Jul 2020 – 10 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 2,278; in a single hotspot: 303 MW
Danger at start: 8; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.2GW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 11 Aug 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 31 Jul 2 Aug 4 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 11 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

28°high

53km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 657 ha in 2018.

424 ha Zhigansky Ulus fire, July 2018 17,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (160 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

15,390 ha

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
24 Jul	26.9 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
25 Jul	22.1 °C	67 %	30 km/h	6.5 mm	Very low 0
26 Jul	15.7 °C	67 %	53 km/h	1.0 mm	Very low 2
27 Jul	13.8 °C	49 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
28 Jul	14.2 °C	61 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
29 Jul	16.6 °C	49 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
30 Jul	20.5 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
31 Jul	23.8 °C	38 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
1 Aug	25.0 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
2 Aug	25.0 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
3 Aug	24.9 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
4 Aug	24.6 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Aug	26.2 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
6 Aug	28.0 °C	33 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
7 Aug	26.0 °C	40 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
8 Aug	22.3 °C	45 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
9 Aug	18.5 °C	62 %	27 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 1
10 Aug	15.1 °C	70 %	42 km/h	1.3 mm	Very low 2
11 Aug after	14.2 °C	54 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
12 Aug after	16.1 °C	50 %	36 km/h	4.4 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jul 2020

After · 17 Aug 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 · 2,278Every 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 29 July 2020 and 10 August 2020: 13 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 15,983 hectares (159.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (15,390 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 2,278 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