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Dundas fire, 2 January 2019 Dundas

Out · last detection 5 Jan 2019, 06:09 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2019 in Dundas, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,963 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2145th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 655 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,963ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
2 Jan 2019 – 5 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Jan
2019
Heat detections
345
in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan5 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

2345

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
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Dundas where it started
    6,003 ha reached on 2 Jan
    0.1 %

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)
2 Jan 41.6 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Jan 32.2 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Jan 26.5 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Jan 28.4 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Jan after 26.7 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Jan after 34.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Jan after 28.9 °C 36 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Jan after 25.4 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
10 Jan after 34.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Jan after 33.2 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Jan after 35.0 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jan after 42.6 °C 18 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jan after 30.4 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Jan after 27.0 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Dec 2018
After · 12 Jan 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 345Every 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 Dundas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2019 and 5 January 2019: 4 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 5,963 hectares (59.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dundas (6,003 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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

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.