How long did the Carnarvon fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 November 2019 and 4 December 2019: 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 9,353 hectares (93.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Carnarvon (9,369 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2019-11-30 → 2019-12-04

Carnarvon fire, November 2019 Carnarvon

Out · last detection 4 Dec 2019, 07:07 UTC

The fire started on 30 November 2019 in Carnarvon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,353 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1139th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 401 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 9,353ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 30 Nov 2019 – 4 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 30 Nov; 2019
Heat detections: 382; in a single hotspot: 261 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.8GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Nov4 Dec

Play back 4 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Nov 1 Dec 2 Dec 3 Dec 4 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

34°high

57km/h · peak gust

21%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?

It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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

Carnarvon where it started

9,369 ha reached on 30 Nov

0.2 %

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 Nov	33.6 °C	33 %	57 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 45
1 Dec	34.1 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
2 Dec	32.2 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Dec	28.9 °C	51 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Dec	28.0 °C	60 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Dec after	27.5 °C	61 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Dec after	27.9 °C	55 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
7 Dec after	27.9 °C	49 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Dec after	26.1 °C	56 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Dec after	28.2 °C	42 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Dec after	30.3 °C	45 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Dec after	27.1 °C	66 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 Dec after	28.3 °C	62 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Dec after	28.8 °C	58 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
14 Dec after	27.6 °C	61 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Nov 2019

After · 11 Dec 2019

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 · 382Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Carnarvon fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 November 2019 and 4 December 2019: 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 9,353 hectares (93.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Carnarvon (9,369 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 382 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.

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