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Dundas fire, January 2020 Dundas, Esperance

Out · last detection 10 Feb 2020, 05:49 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2020 in Dundas, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,888 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 349th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2710 with a page). Number 42 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
19,888ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
27 Jan 2020 – 10 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
27 Jan
2020
Heat detections
962
in a single hotspot: 373 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
40.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Feb 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan10 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

272829303112345678910

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
62km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 11 Feb.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 345 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Dundas where it started
    18,879 ha reached on 21 Jan
    0.2 %
  2. Esperance
    1,216 ha reached on 6 Feb
    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)
21 Jan 30.0 °C 34 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
22 Jan 21.3 °C 46 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
23 Jan 21.5 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 13
24 Jan 23.6 °C 55 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
25 Jan 23.9 °C 57 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
26 Jan 24.1 °C 59 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
27 Jan 25.0 °C 66 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
28 Jan 38.1 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Jan 40.4 °C 7 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jan 29.2 °C 51 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Jan 21.0 °C 49 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
1 Feb 22.8 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Feb 21.8 °C 55 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
3 Feb 20.6 °C 54 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
4 Feb 22.5 °C 54 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
5 Feb 23.3 °C 54 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
6 Feb 24.0 °C 53 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 Feb 25.5 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
8 Feb 28.3 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
9 Feb 24.8 °C 50 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Feb 20.7 °C 54 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 Feb after 20.3 °C 71 % 45 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jan 2020
After · 17 Feb 2020

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 · 962Every 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 27 January 2020 and 10 February 2020: 15 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 19,888 hectares (198.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dundas (18,879 ha, 0.2 %); Esperance (1,216 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

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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.