How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 July 2017 and 30 July 2017: 6 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 6,799 hectares (68.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (6,898 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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 · 2017-07-25 → 2017-07-30

Central Desert fire, 25 July 2017 Central Desert

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2017, 04:55 UTC

The fire started on 25 July 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,799 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2364th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 566 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2026 Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2026 Central Desert · 2017

Burnt area: 6,799ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 25 Jul 2017 – 30 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 25 Jul; 2017
Heat detections: 232; in a single hotspot: 248 MW
Danger at start: 61; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jul30 Jul

Play back 30 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 26 Jul 27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

58km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 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.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

6,898 ha reached on 25 Jul

0.0 %

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.

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)
25 Jul	25.9 °C	7 %	41 km/h	Extreme 61
26 Jul	27.6 °C	8 %	45 km/h	Extreme 63
27 Jul	26.7 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
28 Jul	27.0 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
29 Jul	28.3 °C	15 %	36 km/h	Extreme 55
30 Jul	28.2 °C	17 %	44 km/h	Extreme 65
31 Jul after	24.3 °C	24 %	55 km/h	Extreme 65
1 Aug after	27.6 °C	16 %	58 km/h	Extreme 68
2 Aug after	17.9 °C	16 %	49 km/h	Extreme 58
3 Aug after	19.7 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Extreme 50
4 Aug after	21.7 °C	18 %	23 km/h	High 36
5 Aug after	22.9 °C	15 %	29 km/h	Very high 40
6 Aug after	24.2 °C	11 %	23 km/h	Very high 43
7 Aug after	25.3 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Aug after	26.2 °C	13 %	39 km/h	Extreme 57
9 Aug after	26.7 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 61
10 Aug after	29.5 °C	10 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
11 Aug after	28.0 °C	15 %	45 km/h	Extreme 64
12 Aug after	29.7 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
13 Aug after	29.7 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Very high 48
14 Aug after	30.6 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
15 Aug after	31.4 °C	10 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Jul 2017

After · 6 Aug 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 · 232Every 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 25 July 2017 and 30 July 2017: 6 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 6,799 hectares (68.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (6,898 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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 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. 232 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