How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 August 2020 and 30 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 3,506 hectares (35.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (3,268 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 20.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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 · 2020-08-18 → 2020-08-30

Zhigansky Ulus fire, 18 August 2020 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2020, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2020 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,506 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1245th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 489 in Russia in 2020, of 592.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zhigansky Ulus · 2020 Zhigansky Ulus · 2020 Zhigansky Ulus · 2021 Vilyuysky Ulus · 2018

Burnt area: 3,506ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 18 Aug 2020 – 30 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 18 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 502; in a single hotspot: 220 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 604MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug30 Aug

Play back 30 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug 30 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

21°high

40km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 31 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 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

3,268 ha

0.0 %

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)
17 Aug	18.2 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
18 Aug	20.9 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
19 Aug	15.5 °C	47 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 16
20 Aug	16.1 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
21 Aug	17.0 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
22 Aug	15.0 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
23 Aug	14.5 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
24 Aug	13.3 °C	44 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Aug	15.7 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
26 Aug	16.1 °C	30 %	13 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
27 Aug	19.9 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
28 Aug	20.9 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
29 Aug	20.1 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 Aug	16.6 °C	58 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
31 Aug after	15.1 °C	71 %	19 km/h	5.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Aug 2020

After · 6 Sept 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 · 502Every 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 18 August 2020 and 30 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 3,506 hectares (35.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (3,268 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 20.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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

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. 502 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