How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 May 2018 and 23 May 2018: 12 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 5,241 hectares (52.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (5,331 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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 · 2018-05-12 → 2018-05-23

Central Desert fire, 12 May 2018 Central Desert

Out · last detection 23 May 2018, 05:27 UTC

The fire started on 12 May 2018 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,241 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3279th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 875 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2025 Central Desert · 2023 Central Desert · 2022 MacDonnell · 2022

Burnt area: 5,241ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 12 May 2018 – 23 May 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 12 May; 2018
Heat detections: 334; in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start: 62; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 152MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 May 14 May 16 May 18 May 20 May 23 May

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

The weather it burned in

25°high

60km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

5,331 ha reached on 12 May

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
12 May	22.8 °C	17 %	52 km/h	Extreme 62
13 May	22.7 °C	14 %	50 km/h	Extreme 62
14 May	24.9 °C	15 %	48 km/h	Extreme 59
15 May	23.9 °C	10 %	51 km/h	Extreme 65
16 May	23.0 °C	15 %	55 km/h	Extreme 69
17 May	22.6 °C	19 %	55 km/h	Extreme 67
18 May	22.3 °C	12 %	52 km/h	Extreme 64
19 May	22.6 °C	14 %	51 km/h	Extreme 63
20 May	23.7 °C	16 %	51 km/h	Extreme 63
21 May	23.8 °C	21 %	57 km/h	Extreme 68
22 May	23.3 °C	19 %	60 km/h	Very extreme 74
23 May	21.5 °C	21 %	51 km/h	Extreme 58
24 May after	23.3 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Extreme 50
25 May after	26.8 °C	16 %	40 km/h	Very high 50
26 May after	28.4 °C	16 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
27 May after	30.5 °C	16 %	29 km/h	Very high 46
28 May after	29.9 °C	16 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
29 May after	28.8 °C	22 %	48 km/h	Extreme 61
30 May after	26.2 °C	23 %	58 km/h	Extreme 68
31 May after	24.1 °C	20 %	46 km/h	Extreme 58
1 Jun after	23.4 °C	15 %	34 km/h	Extreme 50
2 Jun after	23.5 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 May 2018

After · 30 May 2018

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 · 334Every 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 12 May 2018 and 23 May 2018: 12 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 5,241 hectares (52.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (5,331 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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. 334 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