How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2016 and 16 October 2016: 2 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 5,034 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (5,032 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 85, 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.

AU · Australia · 2016-10-15 → 2016-10-16

Central Desert fire, 15 October 2016 Central Desert

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2016, 17:11 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2016 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,034 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3461th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 420 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2026 Central Desert · 2016 Central Desert · 2018 Central Desert · 2026

Burnt area: 5,034ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 2days; 15 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 15 Oct; 2016
Heat detections: 182; in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start: 68; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.1GW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 17 Oct 2016

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct16 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct

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

50km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 21 Oct.

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 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

Central Desert where it started

5,032 ha reached on 15 Oct

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)
15 Oct	35.1 °C	5 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
16 Oct	37.8 °C	5 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 85
17 Oct after	32.5 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
18 Oct after	34.3 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
19 Oct after	33.5 °C	18 %	47 km/h	0.8 mm	Extreme 58
20 Oct after	34.8 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
21 Oct after	27.9 °C	24 %	27 km/h	3.8 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Oct 2016

After · 23 Oct 2016

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 · 182Every 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 Central Desert fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2016 and 16 October 2016: 2 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 5,034 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (5,032 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 85, 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

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?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 182 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