How long did the Central Desert fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2023 to 24 October 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2023 to 24 October 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,047 hectares (130.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (13,079 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 90, 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 · 2023-10-18 → 2023-10-24

Central Desert fire, 18 October 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2023, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,047 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1072th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3517 with a page). Number 422 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2018 Central Desert · 2026 Central Desert · 2023 Central Desert · 2023

Burnt area: 13,047ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 18 Oct 2023 – 24 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Oct; 2023
Heat detections: 453; in a single hotspot: 95 MW
Danger at start: 72; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 633MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct24 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct 24 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

38°high

55km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 336 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.2% of the area of London (130 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

13,079 ha reached on 18 Oct

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
18 Oct	34.2 °C	7 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
19 Oct	35.3 °C	6 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
20 Oct	37.1 °C	5 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
21 Oct	37.7 °C	5 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
22 Oct	37.0 °C	8 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 83
23 Oct	37.5 °C	11 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 90
24 Oct	38.3 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
25 Oct after	35.5 °C	13 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
26 Oct after	32.2 °C	11 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 86
27 Oct after	32.9 °C	7 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
28 Oct after	34.1 °C	4 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
29 Oct after	36.1 °C	3 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
30 Oct after	39.0 °C	5 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
31 Oct after	39.5 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
1 Nov after	39.3 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
2 Nov after	36.8 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 65
3 Nov after	37.0 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Oct 2023

After · 31 Oct 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 136 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak136 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10195 µg/m³

Optical depth1.76

WHO 15

1718192021222324252627

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 453Every 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 18 October 2023 to 24 October 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2023 to 24 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,047 hectares (130.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (13,079 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 90, 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.

26 October 2026 Start date: 19 October 2023 → 18 October 2023.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 October 2023 to 24 October 2023. 453 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 2025, 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