How long did the Carnamah fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 December 2020 to 25 December 2020 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 December 2020 to 21 December 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,907 hectares (279.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Carnamah (24,671 ha, 8.6 %); Coorow (1,800 ha, 0.4 %); Irwin (1,482 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class 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.

AU · Australia · 2020-12-10 → 2020-12-25

Carnamah fire, December 2020 Carnamah, Coorow, Irwin

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2020, 06:09 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2020 in Carnamah, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,907 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 201th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 22 in Australia in 2020, of 319.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coorow · 2025

Burnt area: 27,907ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 10 Dec 2020 – 25 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit: 3; local government areas
Started on: 10 Dec; 2020
Heat detections: 1,049; in a single hotspot: 585 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.7GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec25 Dec

Play back 25 Dec 2020

How it evolved, day by day

11 Dec 13 Dec 15 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 22 Dec 24 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

41°high

65km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 179 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (279 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

Carnamah where it started

24,671 ha reached on 11 Dec

8.6 %
Coorow

1,800 ha reached on 17 Dec

0.4 %
Irwin

1,482 ha reached on 11 Dec

0.6 %

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 area1.0 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of 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	30.8 °C	36 %	54 km/h	0.6 mm	High 27
11 Dec	31.4 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
12 Dec	30.3 °C	43 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Dec	22.5 °C	53 %	51 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
14 Dec	24.1 °C	35 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Dec	28.6 °C	28 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Dec	27.6 °C	35 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Dec	30.0 °C	28 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Dec	32.2 °C	28 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Dec	32.5 °C	30 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Dec	29.4 °C	34 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
21 Dec	32.2 °C	30 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Dec	38.0 °C	11 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
23 Dec	40.6 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
24 Dec	36.3 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Dec	36.3 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
26 Dec after	28.3 °C	52 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Dec after	30.9 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Dec after	33.7 °C	20 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
29 Dec after	36.6 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
30 Dec after	26.4 °C	57 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Dec after	26.7 °C	58 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Jan after	28.6 °C	51 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Jan after	34.5 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
3 Jan after	34.7 °C	23 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
4 Jan after	31.8 °C	29 %	64 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Dec 2020

After · 1 Jan 2021

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.

Detections table · 1,049Every 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

12,116 haCoorowDecember 2025 · 2 days · 34 km away

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Carnamah fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 December 2020 to 25 December 2020 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 December 2020 to 21 December 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,907 hectares (279.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Carnamah (24,671 ha, 8.6 %); Coorow (1,800 ha, 0.4 %); Irwin (1,482 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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.

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 10 December 2020 to 21 December 2020. 1,049 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.

Where it burned