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Carnarvon fire, March 2022 Carnarvon

Out · last detection 14 Mar 2022, 05:46 UTC

The fire started on 11 March 2022 in Carnarvon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,576 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1870th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 375 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
6,576ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
11 Mar 2022 – 14 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
11 Mar
2022
Heat detections
256
in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Mar 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Mar14 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

11121314

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
47km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Carnarvon where it started
    6,637 ha reached on 11 Mar
    0.1 %

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)
11 Mar 38.7 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
12 Mar 37.1 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Mar 37.3 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Mar 37.4 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
15 Mar after 37.1 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
16 Mar after 38.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
17 Mar after 40.0 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
18 Mar after 42.2 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
19 Mar after 39.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
20 Mar after 36.1 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Mar after 35.2 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 55
22 Mar after 35.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 54
23 Mar after 37.3 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Mar after 35.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Mar after 39.6 °C 19 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Mar after 33.0 °C 46 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
27 Mar after 33.3 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Mar after 34.8 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Mar 2022
After · 21 Mar 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 · 256Every 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 Carnarvon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2022 and 14 March 2022: 4 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 6,576 hectares (65.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Carnarvon (6,637 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 73, 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

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.

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.

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.