How long did the Dundas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 December 2019 to 13 January 2020 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2019 to 11 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 148,437 hectares (1,484.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dundas (142,371 ha, 1.5 %); Coolgardie (6,559 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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 · 2019-12-17 → 2020-01-13

Dundas fire, 17 December 2019 Dundas, Coolgardie

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2020, 06:14 UTC

The fire started on 17 December 2019 in Dundas, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 148,437 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 11th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 16 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dundas · 2019 Dundas · 2019 Dundas · 2019

Burnt area: 148,437ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 28days; 17 Dec 2019 – 13 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 17 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 11,625; in a single hotspot: 747 MW
Danger at start: 56; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 7.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Dec13 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Dec 21 Dec 25 Dec 29 Dec 2 Jan 6 Jan 10 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

40°high

57km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 16 Jan.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 559 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned almost the same area as London (1,484 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

Dundas where it started

142,371 ha reached on 17 Dec

1.5 %
Coolgardie

6,559 ha reached on 31 Dec

0.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area1.5 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.5 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
17 Dec	36.2 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 56
18 Dec	40.0 °C	14 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
19 Dec	38.7 °C	14 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
20 Dec	29.4 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Dec	33.4 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
22 Dec	37.0 °C	22 %	50 km/h	1.0 mm	Very high 47
23 Dec	33.6 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Dec	34.8 °C	31 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 47
25 Dec	35.0 °C	34 %	42 km/h	17.2 mm	Moderate 12
26 Dec	37.4 °C	31 %	48 km/h	1.7 mm	High 29
27 Dec	31.0 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Dec	35.1 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Dec	37.2 °C	11 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
30 Dec	25.7 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Dec	29.5 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Jan	37.2 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
2 Jan	32.1 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Jan	23.2 °C	26 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Jan	24.0 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Jan	28.9 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Jan	33.7 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Jan	37.9 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Jan	39.8 °C	17 %	47 km/h	1.2 mm	Extreme 51
9 Jan	22.5 °C	50 %	54 km/h	0.8 mm	High 28
10 Jan	26.2 °C	25 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Jan	28.4 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Jan	33.4 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
13 Jan	32.3 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Jan after	34.2 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jan after	25.0 °C	53 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Jan after	29.8 °C	38 %	38 km/h	1.1 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Dec 2019

After · 20 Jan 2020

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.

Detections table · 11,625Every 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 Dundas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 December 2019 to 13 January 2020 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2019 to 11 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 148,437 hectares (1,484.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dundas (142,371 ha, 1.5 %); Coolgardie (6,559 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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 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?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 December 2019 to 11 January 2020. 11,625 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 2020, 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