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Boddington fire, May 2022 Boddington, Wandering, Serpentine-Jarrahdale

Out · last detection 8 May 2022, 06:52 UTC

The fire started on 1 May 2022 in Boddington, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,286 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 869th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 160 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
11,286ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
1 May 2022 – 8 May 2022
Municipalities hit
4
local government areas
Started on
1 May
2022
Heat detections
1,174
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Energy released
6.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 May 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 May8 May

How it evolved, day by day

12345678

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
55km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.7 mm on 12 May.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,947 ha in 2016, 4,310 ha in 2017, 326 ha in 2018, 52 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,705 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Boddington where it started
    6,603 ha reached on 30 Apr
    3.5 %
  2. Wandering
    4,429 ha reached on 30 Apr
    2.3 %
  3. Serpentine-Jarrahdale
    228 ha reached on 5 May
    0.2 %
  4. Murray
    37 ha reached on 1 May
    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)
30 Apr 21.2 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
1 May 23.5 °C 36 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
2 May 21.4 °C 53 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
3 May 18.0 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
4 May 16.3 °C 46 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
5 May 18.0 °C 34 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
6 May 20.1 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 May 22.7 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
8 May 24.0 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
9 May after 23.3 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 May after 23.3 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 May after 19.4 °C 59 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
12 May after 14.6 °C 85 % 29 km/h 23.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Apr 2022
After · 15 May 2022

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 · 1,174Every 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 Boddington fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 May 2022 and 8 May 2022: 8 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 11,286 hectares (112.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Boddington (6,603 ha, 3.5 %); Wandering (4,429 ha, 2.3 %); Serpentine-Jarrahdale (228 ha, 0.2 %); Murray (37 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 24.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
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.

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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 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.