How long did the Zhigansky Ulus fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2021 to 24 August 2021 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2021 to 17 August 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,324 hectares (343.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (33,533 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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 · 2021-07-27 → 2021-08-24

Zhigansky Ulus fire, 27 July 2021 Zhigansky Ulus

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2021, 03:59 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2021 in Zhigansky Ulus, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,324 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 135th largest in Sakha Republic since 2016 (of 1422 with a page). Number 56 in Russia in 2021, of 581.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 34,324ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 27 Jul 2021 – 24 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 27 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 4,449; in a single hotspot: 425 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 3.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul24 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 1 Aug 6 Aug 8 Aug 10 Aug 14 Aug 21 Aug 25 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

27°high

53km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 26 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 22% of the area of London (343 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

33,533 ha reached on 27 Jul

0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
27 Jul	22.6 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
28 Jul	22.5 °C	45 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
29 Jul	24.5 °C	32 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
30 Jul	25.7 °C	35 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
31 Jul	26.9 °C	30 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
1 Aug	26.6 °C	41 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
2 Aug	26.9 °C	47 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
3 Aug	26.3 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
4 Aug	23.9 °C	47 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
5 Aug	24.4 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
6 Aug	16.7 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
7 Aug	23.0 °C	38 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
8 Aug	21.3 °C	49 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Aug	23.2 °C	48 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
10 Aug	20.1 °C	60 %	29 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 4
11 Aug	21.0 °C	57 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 7
12 Aug	20.3 °C	53 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
13 Aug	21.9 °C	50 %	36 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 7
14 Aug	13.4 °C	57 %	32 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 1
15 Aug	14.2 °C	53 %	24 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 3
16 Aug	14.8 °C	54 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
17 Aug	17.1 °C	48 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
18 Aug	16.7 °C	52 %	18 km/h	0.5 mm	Low 9
19 Aug	19.6 °C	57 %	18 km/h	0.8 mm	Low 7
20 Aug	18.1 °C	64 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
21 Aug	19.4 °C	51 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
22 Aug	16.8 °C	49 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
23 Aug	14.5 °C	52 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
24 Aug	17.2 °C	47 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
25 Aug after	20.2 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
26 Aug after	15.8 °C	54 %	44 km/h	1.8 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jul 2021

After · 31 Aug 2021

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 · 4,449Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2021 to 24 August 2021 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2021 to 17 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 34,324 hectares (343.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhigansky Ulus (33,533 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 July 2021 to 17 August 2021. 4,449 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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