How long did the Boddington fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 December 2025 and 27 December 2025: 5 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 6,560 hectares (65.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Boddington (6,578 ha, 3.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

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.

AU · Australia · 2025-12-23 → 2025-12-27

Boddington fire, December 2025 Boddington

Out · last detection 27 Dec 2025, 17:58 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2025 in Boddington, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,560 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1881th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 807 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area: 6,560ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 23 Dec 2025 – 27 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 233; in a single hotspot: 505 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 5.9GW; sum of detected power

Play back 27 Dec 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec27 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

2324252627

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

55km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 194 ha in 2017, 1,232 ha in 2018, 752 ha in 2019, 416 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,407 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Boddington where it started

6,578 ha reached on 23 Dec

3.4 %

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	Danger (FWI)
16 Dec	34.0 °C	34 %	49 km/h	High 22
17 Dec	26.3 °C	37 %	45 km/h	High 24
18 Dec	26.0 °C	33 %	46 km/h	High 25
19 Dec	29.3 °C	33 %	39 km/h	High 24
20 Dec	23.0 °C	31 %	45 km/h	High 25
21 Dec	24.9 °C	29 %	34 km/h	High 24
22 Dec	27.3 °C	34 %	50 km/h	High 28
23 Dec	30.3 °C	29 %	44 km/h	High 27
24 Dec	33.8 °C	21 %	45 km/h	High 32
25 Dec	37.7 °C	14 %	48 km/h	Very high 42
26 Dec	25.5 °C	40 %	55 km/h	High 30
27 Dec	23.7 °C	33 %	37 km/h	High 26
28 Dec after	26.1 °C	31 %	49 km/h	High 30
29 Dec after	25.9 °C	27 %	46 km/h	High 30
30 Dec after	27.2 °C	27 %	50 km/h	High 31
31 Dec after	30.7 °C	21 %	40 km/h	High 33
1 Jan after	33.6 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Very high 42
2 Jan after	35.8 °C	17 %	52 km/h	Very high 47
3 Jan after	33.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	High 37
4 Jan after	34.9 °C	23 %	39 km/h	Very high 39
5 Jan after	33.6 °C	30 %	40 km/h	Very high 38
6 Jan after	31.3 °C	35 %	46 km/h	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Dec 2025

After · 3 Jan 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1044 µg/m³

Optical depth0.53

WHO 15

21222324252627282930

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 233Every 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 Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boddington fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 December 2025 and 27 December 2025: 5 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 6,560 hectares (65.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Boddington (6,578 ha, 3.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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 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.

Where it burned