How long did the Central Desert fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 April 2026 and 17 April 2026: 6 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 6,106 hectares (61.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (5,707 ha, 0.0 %); Victoria Daly (326 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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.

AU · Australia · 2026-04-12 → 2026-04-17

Central Desert fire, April 2026 Central Desert, Victoria Daly

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2026, 05:24 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2026 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,106 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2708th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 655 in Australia in 2026, of 876.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2023 Central Desert · 2025 Victoria Daly · 2023 Central Desert · 2017

Burnt area: 6,106ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 12 Apr 2026 – 17 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 12 Apr; 2026
Heat detections: 121; in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 144MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr17 Apr

Play back 17 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 13 Apr 14 Apr 15 Apr 16 Apr 17 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

44km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 252 ha in 2016, 4,374 ha in 2023, 82 ha in 2024.

4,374 ha Central Desert fire, September 2023 80,067 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (61 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

5,707 ha reached on 12 Apr

0.0 %
Victoria Daly

326 ha reached on 16 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)
9 Apr	30.8 °C	49 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
10 Apr	31.0 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
11 Apr	32.5 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
12 Apr	31.2 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Apr	28.8 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Apr	28.6 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Apr	30.0 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Apr	31.8 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Apr	33.1 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Apr after	31.6 °C	56 %	42 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
19 Apr after	31.0 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Apr after	31.6 °C	22 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Apr after	31.6 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
22 Apr after	31.4 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
23 Apr after	31.3 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Apr after	30.1 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Apr after	29.8 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Apr after	29.9 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Apr after	29.7 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Apr 2026

After · 24 Apr 2026

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 16 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1011 µg/m³

Optical depth0.12

7891011121314151617181920

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 · 121Every 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 12 April 2026 and 17 April 2026: 6 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 6,106 hectares (61.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (5,707 ha, 0.0 %); Victoria Daly (326 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 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.

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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 121 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