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Ashburton fire, 10 December 2018 Ashburton

Out · last detection 19 Dec 2018, 04:50 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2018 in Ashburton, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,919 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1053th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 389 in Australia in 2018, of 924.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ashburton · 2025Ashburton · 2017Ashburton · 2021Ashburton · 2018

Burnt area
9,919ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
10 Dec 2018 – 19 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Dec
2018
Heat detections
388
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
571MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec19 Dec
19 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

10 Dec 2018 · 30 MW · 7 11 Dec 2018 · 361 MW · 31 12 Dec 2018 · 136 MW · 35 13 Dec 2018 · 2,694 MW · 95 14 Dec 2018 · 489 MW · 60 15 Dec 2018 · 701 MW · 57 16 Dec 2018 · 799 MW · 61 17 Dec 2018 · 339 MW · 19 18 Dec 2018 · 91 MW · 17 19 Dec 2018 · 73 MW · 6
10 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 14 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
52km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (99 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

  1. Ashburton where it started
    9,975 ha reached on 10 Dec
    0.1 %

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)
10 Dec 39.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Dec 40.5 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
12 Dec 39.1 °C 7 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
13 Dec 39.1 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
14 Dec 39.5 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
15 Dec 38.1 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
16 Dec 33.3 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
17 Dec 29.5 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Dec 34.1 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 36.7 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Dec after 37.1 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Dec after 37.7 °C 16 % 53 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 64
22 Dec after 38.3 °C 12 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
23 Dec after 39.7 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
24 Dec after 39.5 °C 16 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Dec after 39.8 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Dec after 42.0 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
27 Dec after 43.0 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
28 Dec after 41.6 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 67
29 Dec after 40.8 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Dec 2018
After · 26 Dec 2018

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 · 388Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ashburton fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 December 2018 to 19 December 2018 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 December 2018 to 19 December 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,919 hectares (99.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ashburton (9,975 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.

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 12 December 2018 to 19 December 2018. 388 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 (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.