Central Desert fire, 3 October 2023 Central Desert, Victoria Daly
The fire started on 3 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 133,775 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
- 36,231 haHalls Creek15 September 2023 · 23 days
- 22,097 haHalls Creek18 September 2023 · 16 days
- 19,606 haHalls Creek4 October 2023 · 13 days
- 11,882 haVictoria Daly24 October 2023 · 8 days
- 10,453 haHalls Creek24 September 2023 · 13 days
- 8,191 haVictoria Daly23 October 2023 · 3 days
- 8,190 haHalls Creek4 October 2023 · 6 days
- 7,159 haCentral Desert24 October 2023 · 5 days
It is the 29th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3514 with a page). Number 15 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 133,775ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 29days
- 3 Oct 2023 – 31 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Oct
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 6,877
- in a single hotspot: 565 MW
- Danger at start
- 86
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.3GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 8 Nov.
This area had burned before
52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,105 ha in 2016, 44,180 ha in 2017, 26,339 ha in 2021, 781 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 69,765 ha that had burned before.
- 24,440 ha Victoria Daly fire, August 2017 86,502 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,445 ha Central Desert fire, September 2017 25,229 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,229 ha Central Desert fire, September 2017 10,069 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,917 ha Central Desert fire, October 2021 5,613 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,674 ha Central Desert fire, October 2021 6,443 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,254 ha Central Desert fire, October 2021 5,925 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 975 ha Central Desert fire, October 2021 9,512 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 834 ha Central Desert fire, October 2021 9,476 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started102,602 ha reached on 3 Oct0.4 %
-
30,879 ha reached on 9 Oct0.2 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Oct | 38.5 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 86 |
| 4 Oct | 36.7 °C | 10 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 82 |
| 5 Oct | 33.9 °C | 16 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 6 Oct | 33.7 °C | 14 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 7 Oct | 32.3 °C | 8 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 84 |
| 8 Oct | 32.7 °C | 9 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 9 Oct | 33.6 °C | 10 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 10 Oct | 34.4 °C | 9 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 11 Oct | 35.1 °C | 9 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 72 |
| 12 Oct | 37.4 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 13 Oct | 38.2 °C | 10 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 103 |
| 14 Oct | 35.9 °C | 8 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 15 Oct | 35.5 °C | 8 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 16 Oct | 34.8 °C | 6 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 84 |
| 17 Oct | 34.9 °C | 8 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 87 |
| 18 Oct | 35.6 °C | 7 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 19 Oct | 37.1 °C | 5 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 20 Oct | 38.3 °C | 4 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 21 Oct | 39.3 °C | 5 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 84 |
| 22 Oct | 38.7 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 23 Oct | 38.3 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 24 Oct | 39.6 °C | 13 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 25 Oct | 39.1 °C | 16 % | 50 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 26 Oct | 36.4 °C | 11 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 88 |
| 27 Oct | 35.4 °C | 9 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 91 |
| 28 Oct | 36.1 °C | 4 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 82 |
| 29 Oct | 37.4 °C | 4 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 30 Oct | 38.8 °C | 5 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 31 Oct | 40.3 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 1 Nov after | 39.8 °C | 16 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 2 Nov after | 37.6 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 3 Nov after | 36.1 °C | 21 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 4 Nov after | 39.6 °C | 14 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 5 Nov after | 38.7 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.7 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 6 Nov after | 39.5 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 7 Nov after | 39.5 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
| 8 Nov after | 35.0 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 3.6 mm | High 38 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 26 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 101 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 6,877Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Central Desert fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2023 and 31 October 2023: 29 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 133,775 hectares (1,337.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (102,602 ha, 0.4 %); Victoria Daly (30,879 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 103, 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6,877 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.
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.