How long did the Central Desert fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2017 to 21 September 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2017 to 21 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,904 hectares (119.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (6,842 ha, 0.0 %); Central Desert (5,150 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 102, 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 · 2017-09-03 → 2017-09-21

Central Desert fire, 3 September 2017 Victoria Daly, Central Desert

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,904 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1189th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3512 with a page). Number 257 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Victoria Daly · 2022 Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2026 Victoria Daly · 2026

Burnt area: 11,904ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 3 Sept 2017 – 21 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 3 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 486; in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 157MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept21 Sept

Play back 21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

66km/h · peak gust

3%lowest humidity

It had gone 55 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 7.5% of the area of London (119 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

Victoria Daly

6,842 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.0 %
Central Desert where it started

5,150 ha reached on 3 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	Danger (FWI)
3 Sept	35.0 °C	6 %	24 km/h	Extreme 53
4 Sept	32.9 °C	15 %	49 km/h	Very extreme 73
5 Sept	31.4 °C	12 %	50 km/h	Very extreme 75
6 Sept	32.2 °C	11 %	54 km/h	Very extreme 78
7 Sept	31.3 °C	11 %	55 km/h	Very extreme 79
8 Sept	27.5 °C	9 %	52 km/h	Very extreme 76
9 Sept	30.1 °C	7 %	55 km/h	Very extreme 81
10 Sept	32.2 °C	7 %	47 km/h	Very extreme 70
11 Sept	32.8 °C	6 %	44 km/h	Extreme 70
12 Sept	34.8 °C	7 %	35 km/h	Extreme 63
13 Sept	36.8 °C	4 %	36 km/h	Very extreme 70
14 Sept	30.5 °C	9 %	66 km/h	Very extreme 102
15 Sept	30.1 °C	7 %	55 km/h	Very extreme 87
16 Sept	31.4 °C	4 %	44 km/h	Very extreme 71
17 Sept	32.0 °C	3 %	46 km/h	Very extreme 76
18 Sept	32.8 °C	5 %	34 km/h	Extreme 65
19 Sept	34.3 °C	4 %	37 km/h	Very extreme 72
20 Sept	34.1 °C	7 %	49 km/h	Very extreme 78
21 Sept	35.7 °C	6 %	35 km/h	Extreme 62
22 Sept after	36.8 °C	9 %	35 km/h	Extreme 64
23 Sept after	36.8 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 70
24 Sept after	36.7 °C	11 %	31 km/h	Extreme 63
25 Sept after	36.5 °C	11 %	42 km/h	Very extreme 79
26 Sept after	38.2 °C	10 %	26 km/h	Extreme 60
27 Sept after	37.8 °C	13 %	31 km/h	Extreme 64
28 Sept after	37.0 °C	17 %	41 km/h	Extreme 66
29 Sept after	39.5 °C	15 %	41 km/h	Extreme 69
30 Sept after	37.2 °C	18 %	44 km/h	Extreme 70
1 Oct after	33.5 °C	24 %	54 km/h	Extreme 70

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Aug 2017

After · 28 Sept 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 · 486Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2017 to 21 September 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2017 to 21 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,904 hectares (119.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (6,842 ha, 0.0 %); Central Desert (5,150 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 102, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 8 September 2017 → 3 September 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.

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 September 2017 to 21 September 2017. 486 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