Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Ashburton fire, 1 November 2017 Ashburton

Out · last detection 12 Nov 2017, 05:28 UTC

The fire started on 1 November 2017 in Ashburton, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 31,173 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 170th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 57 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
31,173ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
1 Nov 2017 – 12 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
1 Nov
2017
Heat detections
1,131
in a single hotspot: 360 MW
Danger at start
73
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
30.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Nov 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Nov12 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

123456789101112

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high
52km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Ashburton where it started
    31,358 ha reached on 31 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
31 Oct 41.6 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
1 Nov 41.3 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
2 Nov 40.1 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
3 Nov 41.0 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
4 Nov 39.4 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
5 Nov 39.6 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
6 Nov 38.7 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 89
7 Nov 36.1 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
8 Nov 36.4 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
9 Nov 36.4 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
10 Nov 33.5 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Nov 32.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Nov 32.6 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
13 Nov after 36.5 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
14 Nov after 38.4 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
15 Nov after 34.3 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Nov after 34.2 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Nov after 34.1 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Nov after 33.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Nov after 38.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Nov after 37.7 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
21 Nov after 39.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
22 Nov after 42.3 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Oct 2017
After · 19 Nov 2017

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 · 1,131Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ashburton fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 November 2017 and 12 November 2017: 12 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 31,173 hectares (311.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ashburton (31,358 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 89, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (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: 000

Satellite cross-check

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?

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 000.

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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.