Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Dundas fire, 2 January 2019 Dundas

Out · last detection 5 Jan 2019, 17:27 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 5,597 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2320th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 691 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dundas · 2023Dundas · 2019Dundas · 2023Dundas · 2023

Burnt area
5,597ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
2 Jan 2019 – 5 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Jan
2019
Heat detections
294
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
672MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

5 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan5 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 2019 · 289 MW · 153 3 Jan 2019 · 440 MW · 45 4 Jan 2019 · 1,697 MW · 73 5 Jan 2019 · 260 MW · 22
2 Jan 3 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
46km/h · peak gust
13%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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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. Dundas where it started
    5,619 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 41.3 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jan 32.8 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jan 26.6 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Jan 28.6 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Jan after 26.6 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
7 Jan after 34.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jan after 30.5 °C 32 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jan after 25.9 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Jan after 34.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jan after 33.1 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jan after 35.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
13 Jan after 42.7 °C 16 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Jan after 31.9 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jan after 28.7 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

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 · 294Every 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 5,597 hectares (56.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dundas (5,619 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

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. 294 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.