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Central Desert fire, 26 September 2017 Central Desert, Halls Creek

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2017, 04:57 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,229 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 458th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3512 with a page). Number 72 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2023Central Desert · 2025Victoria Daly · 2025Halls Creek · 2023

Burnt area
25,229ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
26 Sept 2017 – 1 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
26 Sept
2017
Heat detections
846
in a single hotspot: 210 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept1 Oct
2 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

26 Sept 2017 · 2,634 MW · 188 27 Sept 2017 · 1,422 MW · 215 28 Sept 2017 · 3,010 MW · 153 29 Sept 2017 · 4,233 MW · 186 30 Sept 2017 · 325 MW · 66 1 Oct 2017 · 418 MW · 34 2 Oct 2017 · 14 MW · 4
26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 29 Sept 30 Sept 1 Oct 2 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

39°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 815 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (252 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

  1. Central Desert where it started
    23,187 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.1 %
  2. Halls Creek
    1,847 ha reached on 26 Sept
    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.

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Sept 37.0 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Sept 36.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Sept 36.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
29 Sept 39.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Sept 36.3 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
1 Oct 34.0 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
2 Oct after 33.5 °C 24 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
3 Oct after 35.5 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Oct after 35.1 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct after 37.5 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
6 Oct after 38.4 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
7 Oct after 33.3 °C 31 % 34 km/h 3.4 mm High 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2017
After · 8 Oct 2017

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 · 846Every 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 Central Desert fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 September 2017 to 1 October 2017 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 September 2017 to 30 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,229 hectares (252.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (23,187 ha, 0.1 %); Halls Creek (1,847 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 30 September 2017 → 1 October 2017.

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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 September 2017 to 30 September 2017. 846 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.