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Central Desert fire, 14 July 2018 Central Desert, Barkly

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2018, 05:40 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2018 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,039 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1463th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 384 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2025Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2017

Burnt area
10,039ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
14 Jul 2018 – 20 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
14 Jul
2018
Heat detections
277
in a single hotspot: 208 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul20 Jul
20 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 2018 · 608 MW · 59 15 Jul 2018 · 6,997 MW · 182 16 Jul 2018 · 291 MW · 24 17 Jul 2018 · 10 MW · 2 18 Jul 2018 · 145 MW · 4 19 Jul 2018 · 209 MW · 4 20 Jul 2018 · 8 MW · 2
14 Jul 15 Jul 16 Jul 17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
49km/h · peak gust
7%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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (100 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
    6,735 ha reached on 14 Jul
    0.0 %
  2. Barkly
    3,350 ha reached on 15 Jul
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
14 Jul 23.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jul 25.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jul 25.8 °C 7 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul 25.7 °C 8 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Jul 26.1 °C 7 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Jul 28.5 °C 7 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jul 26.7 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
21 Jul after 25.9 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Jul after 25.9 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Jul after 28.7 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Jul after 29.3 °C 12 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul after 30.0 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jul after 31.0 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
27 Jul after 28.9 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Jul after 27.4 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Jul after 26.0 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
30 Jul after 26.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2018
After · 27 Jul 2018

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 · 277Every 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 14 July 2018 and 20 July 2018: 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 10,039 hectares (100.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (6,735 ha, 0.0 %); Barkly (3,350 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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. 277 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 2020, 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.