How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2024 and 31 October 2024: 14 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 21,550 hectares (215.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (21,369 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, 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 · 2024-10-18 → 2024-10-31

Central Desert fire, 18 October 2024 Central Desert

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2024, 04:50 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2024 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,550 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 558th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3512 with a page). Number 87 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2018 Central Desert · 2022 Central Desert · 2023 Central Desert · 2025

Burnt area: 21,550ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 18 Oct 2024 – 31 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 779; in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start: 38; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 371MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct31 Oct

Play back 1 Nov 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct 27 Oct 30 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

41°high

55km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,951 ha in 2018, 2,756 ha in 2022, 176 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (216 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

21,369 ha reached on 18 Oct

0.1 %

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	36.5 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
19 Oct	38.3 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 50
20 Oct	38.0 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Oct	39.6 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
22 Oct	40.6 °C	9 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
23 Oct	40.3 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
24 Oct	40.8 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
25 Oct	38.9 °C	13 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
26 Oct	39.2 °C	10 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
27 Oct	39.9 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
28 Oct	38.4 °C	13 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
29 Oct	39.3 °C	8 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 86
30 Oct	39.8 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
31 Oct	39.8 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
1 Nov after	38.3 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 54
2 Nov after	39.9 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Nov after	41.0 °C	13 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
4 Nov after	40.9 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
5 Nov after	40.7 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
6 Nov after	40.8 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
7 Nov after	38.2 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
8 Nov after	40.2 °C	19 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
9 Nov after	40.7 °C	20 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
10 Nov after	37.2 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
11 Nov after	38.7 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Oct 2024

After · 7 Nov 2024

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 1 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1082 µg/m³

Optical depth1.50

WHO 15

16171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 779Every 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 18 October 2024 and 31 October 2024: 14 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 21,550 hectares (215.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (21,369 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 86, 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 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.

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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. 779 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