English: As spring warmth spread across Siberia, so does the risk of wildfire. The fire season in Russia began early in 2019, and by May was already blazing hot. On May 11, 2019, the Russian News Agency (TASS) reported “The fire season has begun in 77 Russian regions. A state of emergency has been declared in six regions, namely the Kurgan, Trans-Baikal, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Tuva regions, as well as in certain districts of the Chelyabinsk region”. They report that wildfires have scorched over 44,000 hectares across 18 regions, and that 155 forest fires had been extinguished in the past 24 hours.

On May 7, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of more than a dozen fires burning in Irkutsk Oblast northwest of Lake Baikal.

Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with smoke, as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning fire. Long plumes of smoke rise from most of the fires and blow strongly to the southeast—some for hundreds of miles. Although hot, dry conditions typically favor fire ignition and growth, it is clear that the fires in this region are not reliant on extreme heat as many of the lakes and rivers remain frozen. Indeed, Lake Baikal still carries winter ice, especially in the southeast.