Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Central Desert fire, 1 August 2026 Central Desert

Out · last detection 9 Aug 2026, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2026 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,319 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1835th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 425 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area
8,319ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
1 Aug 2026 – 10 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
1 Aug
2026
Heat detections
167
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Aug 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1246789

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
65km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 15 Aug.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 134 ha in 2016, 847 ha in 2017, 129 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Desert where it started
    8,440 ha reached on 1 Aug
    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)
1 Aug 22.2 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Aug 24.5 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Aug 24.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Aug 25.0 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 26.0 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Aug 26.1 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug 28.0 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Aug 29.7 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Aug 20.5 °C 17 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
10 Aug 21.0 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Aug after 26.3 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Aug after 20.7 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Aug after 21.1 °C 24 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Aug after 25.2 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug after 20.7 °C 31 % 38 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2026
After · 17 Aug 2026

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 7 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak59 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1061 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
303112345678910111213
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 · 167Every 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 1 August 2026 and 10 August 2026: 10 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 8,319 hectares (83.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Central Desert (8,440 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.