How long did the Central Desert fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 October 2023 to 18 October 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2023 to 14 October 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 55,413 hectares (554.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (55,895 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class 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 · 2023-10-03 → 2023-10-18

Central Desert fire, 3 October 2023 Central Desert

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2023, 16:08 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 55,413 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 154th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3515 with a page). Number 84 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 55,413ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 3 Oct 2023 – 18 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 3 Oct; 2023
Heat detections: 2,328; in a single hotspot: 348 MW
Danger at start: 67; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct18 Oct

Play back 19 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 18 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

37°high

55km/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

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,394 ha in 2017, 370 ha in 2018, 1,130 ha in 2022.

370 ha Central Desert fire, August 2018 7,801 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 35% of the area of London (554 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

55,895 ha reached on 3 Oct

0.2 %

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 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	Danger (FWI)
3 Oct	37.1 °C	16 %	52 km/h	Extreme 67
4 Oct	28.3 °C	12 %	55 km/h	Extreme 67
5 Oct	27.7 °C	15 %	47 km/h	Extreme 59
6 Oct	28.2 °C	14 %	46 km/h	Extreme 58
7 Oct	28.2 °C	15 %	49 km/h	Extreme 61
8 Oct	29.3 °C	16 %	45 km/h	Extreme 58
9 Oct	30.4 °C	16 %	44 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Oct	30.8 °C	10 %	46 km/h	Extreme 58
11 Oct	32.2 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 50
12 Oct	34.6 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 61
13 Oct	32.9 °C	13 %	49 km/h	Extreme 66
14 Oct	30.7 °C	10 %	50 km/h	Extreme 65
15 Oct	31.2 °C	9 %	41 km/h	Extreme 57
16 Oct	32.2 °C	12 %	50 km/h	Extreme 66
17 Oct	30.7 °C	10 %	48 km/h	Extreme 64
18 Oct	32.1 °C	10 %	36 km/h	Extreme 55
19 Oct after	34.2 °C	8 %	26 km/h	Extreme 50
20 Oct after	35.5 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Oct after	35.8 °C	7 %	39 km/h	Extreme 62
22 Oct after	34.3 °C	13 %	40 km/h	Extreme 64
23 Oct after	35.4 °C	14 %	37 km/h	Extreme 60
24 Oct after	37.1 °C	15 %	31 km/h	Extreme 64
25 Oct after	32.1 °C	17 %	45 km/h	Extreme 64
26 Oct after	28.8 °C	13 %	56 km/h	Very extreme 71
27 Oct after	29.7 °C	11 %	50 km/h	Extreme 65
28 Oct after	31.2 °C	8 %	40 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Sept 2023

After · 25 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 11 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1097 µg/m³

Optical depth0.75

WHO 15

1234567891011121314151617

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 · 2,328Every 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 3 October 2023 to 18 October 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2023 to 14 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 55,413 hectares (554.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (55,895 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class 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 Last day with fire: 14 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.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 3 October 2023 to 14 October 2023. 2,328 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