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Central Desert fire, 22 September 2017 Central Desert

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2017, 04:32 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2017 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,679 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1740th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 416 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2025Central Desert · 2026Central Desert · 2024Central Desert · 2026

Burnt area
8,679ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
22 Sept 2017 – 28 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Sept
2017
Heat detections
338
in a single hotspot: 200 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2017 · 1,426 MW · 77 23 Sept 2017 · 2,742 MW · 73 24 Sept 2017 · 3,738 MW · 127 25 Sept 2017 · 323 MW · 29 26 Sept 2017 · 582 MW · 18 27 Sept 2017 · 138 MW · 11 28 Sept 2017 · 16 MW · 3
22 Sept 23 Sept 24 Sept 25 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 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

38°high
42km/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

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 40 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (87 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
    8,598 ha reached on 22 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)
22 Sept 37.0 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
23 Sept 37.6 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
24 Sept 37.4 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Sept 37.6 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
26 Sept 38.5 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Sept 38.5 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Sept 37.9 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
29 Sept after 39.5 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
30 Sept after 37.9 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
1 Oct after 33.5 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
2 Oct after 33.0 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
3 Oct after 35.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Oct after 36.6 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
5 Oct after 38.6 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
6 Oct after 38.9 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
7 Oct after 34.6 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Oct after 34.6 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.9 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2017
After · 5 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 · 338Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 September 2017 and 28 September 2017: 7 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 8,679 hectares (86.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (8,598 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, 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

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.

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 338 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.