How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 May 2017 and 8 June 2017: 24 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 26,411 hectares (264.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (26,669 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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 · 2017-05-16 → 2017-06-08

Central Desert fire, 16 May 2017 Central Desert

Out · last detection 8 Jun 2017, 17:23 UTC

The fire started on 16 May 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,411 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 427th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 69 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2025 Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2025

Burnt area: 26,411ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 16 May 2017 – 8 Jun 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 16 May; 2017
Heat detections: 960; in a single hotspot: 271 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 497MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 May8 Jun

Play back 8 Jun 2017

How it evolved, day by day

16 May 19 May 20 May 24 May 28 May 1 Jun 5 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

54km/h · peak gust

9%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 17% of the area of London (264 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

26,669 ha reached on 16 May

0.1 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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	Danger (FWI)
16 May	30.3 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
17 May	30.1 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
18 May	26.1 °C	19 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58
19 May	26.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58
20 May	28.6 °C	16 %	33 km/h	Very high 47
21 May	30.0 °C	22 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
22 May	31.5 °C	22 %	38 km/h	Extreme 51
23 May	31.5 °C	22 %	19 km/h	Very high 43
24 May	31.0 °C	15 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
25 May	30.7 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
26 May	29.5 °C	17 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
27 May	29.3 °C	16 %	24 km/h	Very high 44
28 May	30.0 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 57
29 May	28.3 °C	17 %	49 km/h	Extreme 64
30 May	26.8 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
31 May	23.9 °C	16 %	52 km/h	Extreme 64
1 Jun	22.9 °C	16 %	53 km/h	Extreme 66
2 Jun	22.6 °C	10 %	50 km/h	Extreme 63
3 Jun	23.5 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 56
4 Jun	23.8 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
5 Jun	23.9 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 57
6 Jun	23.2 °C	9 %	54 km/h	Extreme 69
7 Jun	22.7 °C	9 %	47 km/h	Extreme 63
8 Jun	22.0 °C	15 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
9 Jun after	22.6 °C	13 %	56 km/h	Very extreme 71
10 Jun after	20.9 °C	14 %	52 km/h	Extreme 65
11 Jun after	21.8 °C	15 %	44 km/h	Extreme 60
12 Jun after	21.4 °C	19 %	54 km/h	Extreme 64
13 Jun after	22.1 °C	24 %	49 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Jun after	23.1 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Very high 48
15 Jun after	24.5 °C	19 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
16 Jun after	25.4 °C	22 %	31 km/h	Very high 41
17 Jun after	25.8 °C	19 %	44 km/h	Extreme 52
18 Jun after	23.3 °C	21 %	54 km/h	Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 May 2017

After · 15 Jun 2017

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 · 960Every 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 16 May 2017 and 8 June 2017: 24 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 26,411 hectares (264.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (26,669 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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

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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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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 960 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 2015, 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