The fire started on 24 August 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 86,502 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
Union of 3 GWIS (Copernicus) perimeters: overlapping areas count once.
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
24 Aug 2017 to 16 Sept 2017: first and last day with fire on the page.
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 232 MW.
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
Total radiative power on 29 August 2017; hotspots that day: 669.
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 45.
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
High of 36.8 °C and minimum humidity of 4% on 13 September 2017; gusts of 68 km/h on 14 September 2017.
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-08-24 | 27 | 52 | 33.2 | 19.1 | 13 | 28.9 | 47.5 | 0 | 98.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-25 | 139 | 2,177 | 29 | 18.2 | 12 | 32.5 | 54.4 | 0 | 104.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-26 | 147 | 837 | 29 | 13.2 | 10 | 29.9 | 51.8 | 0 | 96.6 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-27 | 127 | 938 | 28.9 | 15.1 | 11 | 35.9 | 58.3 | 0 | 116.6 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-28 | 110 | 745 | 25.9 | 12.3 | 11 | 29.6 | 50 | 0 | 91 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-29 | 669 | 8,047 | 27.8 | 10.9 | 9 | 26.2 | 45.4 | 0 | 87 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-30 | 504 | 5,647 | 27.5 | 13 | 11 | 30.6 | 52.2 | 0 | 97.6 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-08-31 | 446 | 3,718 | 28.8 | 12.1 | 6 | 28.1 | 49.7 | 0 | 95.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-01 | 318 | 1,537 | 30.7 | 10.5 | 4 | 18 | 33.8 | 0 | 77.9 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-02 | 226 | 1,039 | 33.3 | 11.2 | 6 | 16.9 | 35.3 | 0 | 68.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-03 | 347 | 4,565 | 34.8 | 13.7 | 6 | 13.6 | 22 | 0 | 53.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-04 | 83 | 2,593 | 33.1 | 17.2 | 14 | 30.3 | 50.8 | 0 | 94.3 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-05 | 67 | 252 | 31.7 | 17.2 | 12 | 32 | 51.5 | 0 | 103.8 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-06 | 64 | 395 | 32.4 | 17.6 | 11 | 34.3 | 55.8 | 0 | 112.5 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-07 | 24 | 179 | 31.5 | 16.5 | 11 | 33.1 | 55.8 | 0 | 111.3 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-08 | 19 | 138 | 27.6 | 18.3 | 9 | 29.8 | 51.8 | 0 | 95.1 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-09 | 21 | 85 | 30.2 | 14.2 | 7 | 33.6 | 56.2 | 0 | 107.7 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-10 | 15 | 102 | 32.3 | 13.7 | 7 | 27.4 | 47.5 | 0 | 101.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-11 | 14 | 348 | 32.9 | 14.3 | 6 | 25.6 | 43.2 | 0 | 95.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-12 | 14 | 189 | 34.8 | 14.3 | 6 | 20.2 | 32.8 | 0 | 70.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-13 | 46 | 2,942 | 36.8 | 15.2 | 4 | 21.9 | 35.6 | 0 | 73.2 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-14 | 25 | 230 | 30.7 | 20 | 9 | 43.2 | 68.4 | 0 | 147.7 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-15 | 8 | 81 | 30.4 | 15.7 | 7 | 34.7 | 56.9 | 0 | 116.1 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-16 | 1 | 4 | 31.5 | 12.1 | 3 | 25.1 | 43.9 | 0 | 97.4 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2017-09-17 | 0 | 0 | 32.1 | 13.3 | 3 | 27 | 46.1 | 0 | 106.1 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-18 | 0 | 0 | 32.9 | 13.6 | 5 | 21.3 | 35.3 | 0 | 88.6 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-19 | 0 | 0 | 34.4 | 13.9 | 4 | 24.5 | 37.8 | 0 | 106.1 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-20 | 0 | 0 | 34.1 | 15.8 | 6 | 27.9 | 49 | 0 | 105.5 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-21 | 0 | 0 | 35.8 | 16.2 | 6 | 17.9 | 35.3 | 0 | 67 | extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-22 | 0 | 0 | 36.9 | 17.4 | 8 | 18.1 | 34.6 | 0 | 73.4 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-23 | 0 | 0 | 36.7 | 20.6 | 11 | 19.4 | 35.6 | 0 | 80.4 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-24 | 0 | 0 | 36.5 | 18.6 | 11 | 16.7 | 31.7 | 0 | 77.3 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-25 | 0 | 0 | 36.2 | 19 | 11 | 25.8 | 41.4 | 0 | 101.2 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2017-09-26 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 18 | 9 | 14.4 | 26.3 | 0 | 65.7 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 298 ha in 2016.
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
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.
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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 43 % of the area in Australia Very dry air: 28 % of the area in Australia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Aug | 33.2 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 98 |
| 25 Aug | 29.0 °C | 12 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 104 |
| 26 Aug | 29.0 °C | 10 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 97 |
| 27 Aug | 28.9 °C | 11 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 117 |
| 28 Aug | 25.9 °C | 11 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 91 |
| 29 Aug | 27.8 °C | 9 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 87 |
| 30 Aug | 27.5 °C | 11 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 98 |
| 31 Aug | 28.8 °C | 6 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 95 |
| 1 Sept | 30.7 °C | 4 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 2 Sept | 33.3 °C | 6 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 3 Sept | 34.8 °C | 6 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 4 Sept | 33.1 °C | 14 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 94 |
| 5 Sept | 31.7 °C | 12 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 104 |
| 6 Sept | 32.4 °C | 11 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 112 |
| 7 Sept | 31.5 °C | 11 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 111 |
| 8 Sept | 27.6 °C | 9 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 95 |
| 9 Sept | 30.2 °C | 7 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 108 |
| 10 Sept | 32.3 °C | 7 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 101 |
| 11 Sept | 32.9 °C | 6 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 95 |
| 12 Sept | 34.8 °C | 6 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 13 Sept | 36.8 °C | 4 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 14 Sept | 30.7 °C | 9 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 148 |
| 15 Sept | 30.4 °C | 7 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 116 |
| 16 Sept | 31.5 °C | 3 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 97 |
| 17 Sept after | 32.1 °C | 3 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 106 |
| 18 Sept after | 32.9 °C | 5 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 89 |
| 19 Sept after | 34.4 °C | 4 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 106 |
| 20 Sept after | 34.1 °C | 6 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 106 |
| 21 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 6 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 22 Sept after | 36.9 °C | 8 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 23 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 11 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 24 Sept after | 36.5 °C | 11 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 25 Sept after | 36.2 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 101 |
| 26 Sept after | 37.9 °C | 9 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
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
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
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.