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Dundas fire, January 2021 Dundas

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2021, 05:05 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2021 in Dundas, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 413th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 82 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
18,363ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
11 Jan 2021 – 23 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
11 Jan
2021
Heat detections
905
in a single hotspot: 488 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
41.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Jan 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan23 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

11121314161718192021222324

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
54km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 25 Jan.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 219 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Dundas where it started
    18,370 ha reached on 11 Jan
    0.2 %

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)
11 Jan 27.2 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Jan 30.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Jan 28.6 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Jan 25.7 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
15 Jan 23.5 °C 38 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Jan 24.0 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jan 26.0 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jan 29.2 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jan 32.1 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jan 36.7 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jan 38.9 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 60
22 Jan 39.2 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Jan 35.5 °C 32 % 54 km/h 3.8 mm High 28
24 Jan after 32.7 °C 41 % 46 km/h 3.9 mm Moderate 12
25 Jan after 27.2 °C 38 % 42 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jan 2021
After · 30 Jan 2021

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 · 905Every 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 11 January 2021 and 23 January 2021: 13 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 18,363 hectares (183.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dundas (18,370 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

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
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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.

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.