How long did the Central Desert fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 January 2025 to 5 February 2025 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2025 to 4 February 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 51,428 hectares (514.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (52,036 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 87, 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 · 2025-01-27 → 2025-02-05

Central Desert fire, 27 January 2025 Central Desert

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2025, 04:50 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 51,428 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 170th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3512 with a page). Number 66 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2025 Central Desert · 2025 Central Desert · 2025

Burnt area: 51,428ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 27 Jan 2025 – 5 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 1,812; in a single hotspot: 395 MW
Danger at start: 74; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 4.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan5 Feb

Play back 5 Feb 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jan 30 Jan 1 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

43°high

55km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,485 ha in 2016, 513 ha in 2017.

319 ha Central Desert fire, October 2017 8,638 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (514 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

52,036 ha reached on 28 Jan

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
27 Jan	39.7 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
28 Jan	42.9 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
29 Jan	41.2 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
30 Jan	41.1 °C	14 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
31 Jan	41.7 °C	11 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 86
1 Feb	42.2 °C	10 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 81
2 Feb	41.4 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 79
3 Feb	40.5 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
4 Feb	40.0 °C	16 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
5 Feb	40.2 °C	14 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 87
6 Feb after	39.8 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
7 Feb after	37.6 °C	22 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
8 Feb after	40.5 °C	14 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
9 Feb after	39.7 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
10 Feb after	40.3 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
11 Feb after	38.6 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
12 Feb after	38.7 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
13 Feb after	38.5 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 74
14 Feb after	36.4 °C	27 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 62
15 Feb after	31.9 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jan 2025

After · 12 Feb 2025

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 2 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 39 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak39 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1064 µg/m³

Optical depth0.77

WHO 15

252627282930311234567

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 · 1,812Every 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 27 January 2025 to 5 February 2025 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2025 to 4 February 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 51,428 hectares (514.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (52,036 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 87, 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 Last day with fire: 4 February 2025 → 5 February 2025.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 January 2025 to 4 February 2025. 1,812 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