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Central Desert fire, 5 July 2025 Victoria Daly, Central Desert

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2025, 16:34 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2025 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,234 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 431th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 143 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2023Victoria Daly · 2023Victoria Daly · 2024Central Desert · 2026

Burnt area
26,234ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
5 Jul 2025 – 24 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
5 Jul
2025
Heat detections
968
in a single hotspot: 278 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
774MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul24 Jul
24 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jul 2025 · 549 MW · 29 6 Jul 2025 · 1,987 MW · 72 7 Jul 2025 · 2,403 MW · 99 8 Jul 2025 · 121 MW · 29 9 Jul 2025 · 174 MW · 28 10 Jul 2025 · 331 MW · 72 11 Jul 2025 · 164 MW · 44 12 Jul 2025 · 163 MW · 43 13 Jul 2025 · 203 MW · 64 14 Jul 2025 · 461 MW · 80 15 Jul 2025 · 6,077 MW · 131 16 Jul 2025 · 235 MW · 48 17 Jul 2025 · 143 MW · 37 18 Jul 2025 · 81 MW · 26 19 Jul 2025 · 224 MW · 42 20 Jul 2025 · 165 MW · 36 21 Jul 2025 · 829 MW · 36 22 Jul 2025 · 1,132 MW · 41 23 Jul 2025 · 30 MW · 5 24 Jul 2025 · 15 MW · 6
5 Jul 8 Jul 11 Jul 14 Jul 15 Jul 17 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,138 ha in 2016, 432 ha in 2017, 12,915 ha in 2023, 51 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (262 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

  1. Victoria Daly
    17,015 ha reached on 6 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. Central Desert where it started
    9,411 ha reached on 5 Jul
    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.

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)
5 Jul 28.5 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jul 29.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Jul 28.2 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Jul 28.3 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jul 29.3 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jul 26.7 °C 18 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
11 Jul 24.6 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Jul 28.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Jul 30.3 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jul 30.3 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Jul 31.8 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jul 29.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jul 28.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jul 26.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Jul 26.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jul 26.6 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Jul 28.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jul 29.1 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Jul 29.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Jul 31.4 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Jul after 31.9 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Jul after 25.8 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jul after 30.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul after 32.3 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Jul after 27.1 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Jul after 26.6 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Jul after 25.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Aug after 24.0 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Aug after 22.3 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
3 Aug after 24.5 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jun 2025
After · 31 Jul 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 8 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 77 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 49: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak77 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1078 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
3456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 968Every 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 5 July 2025 and 24 July 2025: 20 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 26,234 hectares (262.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (17,015 ha, 0.1 %); Central Desert (9,411 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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

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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 968 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.

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.