How long did the Dandaragan fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2025 and 23 December 2025: 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 6,858 hectares (68.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Victoria Plains (4,702 ha, 1.8 %); Gingin (1,524 ha, 0.5 %); Dandaragan (653 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2025-12-14 → 2025-12-23

Dandaragan fire, December 2025 Victoria Plains, Gingin, Dandaragan

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2025, 17:32 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2025 in Dandaragan, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,858 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 1749th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 752 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 6,858ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 14 Dec 2025 – 23 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 3; local government areas
Started on: 14 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 301; in a single hotspot: 275 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec23 Dec

Play back 23 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 15 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 20 Dec 23 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

53km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,181 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (69 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

Victoria Plains

4,702 ha reached on 14 Dec

1.8 %
Gingin

1,524 ha reached on 14 Dec

0.5 %
Dandaragan where it started

653 ha reached on 14 Dec

0.1 %

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 area6.4 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.4 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
14 Dec	42.0 °C	14 %	50 km/h	2.3 mm	Very high 49
15 Dec	37.7 °C	24 %	52 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 41
16 Dec	36.8 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Dec	27.1 °C	38 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
18 Dec	31.5 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Dec	32.5 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Dec	27.9 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Dec	28.1 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Dec	31.5 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
23 Dec	35.4 °C	16 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 Dec after	38.2 °C	10 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Dec after	40.2 °C	12 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
26 Dec after	24.7 °C	49 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Dec after	26.0 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
28 Dec after	29.8 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Dec after	30.1 °C	19 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Dec after	31.9 °C	17 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
31 Dec after	33.8 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
1 Jan after	37.5 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Jan after	39.9 °C	12 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Dec 2025

After · 30 Dec 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 15 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1023 µg/m³

Optical depth0.26

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223242526

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 · 301Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dandaragan fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2025 and 23 December 2025: 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 6,858 hectares (68.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Victoria Plains (4,702 ha, 1.8 %); Gingin (1,524 ha, 0.5 %); Dandaragan (653 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 really happened?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 301 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