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Central Desert fire, 7 January 2025 Central Desert, Barkly

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2025, 04:57 UTC

The fire started on 7 January 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,937 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1179th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 402 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
11,937ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
7 Jan 2025 – 9 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
7 Jan
2025
Heat detections
568
in a single hotspot: 302 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
9.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Jan 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jan9 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

789

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
34km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.3 mm on 15 Jan.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,208 ha in 2016, 1,081 ha in 2018, 544 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,568 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Desert where it started
    9,652 ha reached on 7 Jan
    0.0 %
  2. Barkly
    2,177 ha reached on 7 Jan
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
7 Jan 39.7 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Jan 40.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
9 Jan 41.7 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 49
10 Jan after 41.5 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 45
11 Jan after 40.4 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 56
12 Jan after 38.7 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 55
13 Jan after 39.0 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jan after 39.4 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 43
15 Jan after 38.4 °C 32 % 41 km/h 9.3 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Dec 2024
After · 16 Jan 2025

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 9 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1062 µg/m³
Optical depth1.34
56789101112
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 · 568Every 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 7 January 2025 and 9 January 2025: 3 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 11,937 hectares (119.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (9,652 ha, 0.0 %); Barkly (2,177 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
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

Satellite cross-check

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
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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.

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.