How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 April 2025 and 7 May 2025: 18 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 8,622 hectares (86.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Desert (8,527 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 · 2025-04-20 → 2025-05-07

Central Desert fire, 20 April 2025 Central Desert

Out · last detection 8 May 2025, 04:27 UTC

The fire started on 20 April 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,622 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1760th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 585 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2017 Central Desert · 2021 Central Desert · 2024 Central Desert · 2026

Burnt area: 8,622ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 20 Apr 2025 – 7 May 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 20 Apr; 2025
Heat detections: 336; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 87MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Apr7 May

Play back 8 May 2025

How it evolved, day by day

21 Apr 24 Apr 27 Apr 30 Apr 3 May 6 May

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

59km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 675 ha in 2017, 149 ha in 2018, 6 ha in 2021, 472 ha in 2022, 1,259 ha in 2023, 322 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,502 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (86 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

8,527 ha reached on 21 Apr

0.0 %

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)
20 Apr	32.8 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Apr	35.1 °C	28 %	53 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46
22 Apr	32.6 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
23 Apr	29.4 °C	17 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
24 Apr	30.5 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Apr	31.8 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Apr	32.8 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
27 Apr	31.8 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 Apr	32.6 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
29 Apr	30.3 °C	23 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
30 Apr	28.0 °C	24 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
1 May	28.6 °C	20 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
2 May	28.3 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
3 May	31.0 °C	23 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
4 May	32.2 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 May	32.5 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
6 May	32.1 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
7 May	31.4 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
8 May after	29.8 °C	28 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
9 May after	30.2 °C	29 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
10 May after	29.6 °C	25 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
11 May after	29.7 °C	28 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
12 May after	30.9 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46
13 May after	27.0 °C	40 %	45 km/h	0.9 mm	High 31
14 May after	29.9 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 May after	28.6 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
16 May after	27.5 °C	15 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 May after	26.7 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
18 May after	24.9 °C	22 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Apr 2025

After · 14 May 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 25 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1027 µg/m³

Optical depth0.16

WHO 15

1819202122232425262728293012345678910

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 · 336Every 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 20 April 2025 and 7 May 2025: 18 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 8,622 hectares (86.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Desert (8,527 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 336 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