Burned area
satellite only7,781ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 1 Jan 2024 – 5 Jan 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
East Pilbara fire, 1 January 2024 East Pilbara
Out · last detection 4 Jan 2024, 05:53 UTC
The fire started on 1 January 2024 in East Pilbara, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,781 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-26matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
1 Jan 2024 to 5 Jan 2024: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 4 Jan 2024, 05:53 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only1 Jan 2024
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Jan 2024
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only309
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 219 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 1 Jan 2024 – 5 Jan 2024
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only5,085MW
Total radiative power on 2 January 2024; hotspots that day: 150.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Jan 2024
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model82.0FWI · very extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 7.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Jan 2024, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model44.9°C · 10% RH
High of 44.9 °C and minimum humidity of 10% on 2 January 2024; gusts of 49 km/h on 2 January 2024.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Jan 2024 – 5 Jan 2024
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logLast day with fire: 4 January 2024 → 5 January 2024.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 26 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 7,781 ha
- Dates
- 1 Jan 2024 – 5 Jan 2024
- Name
- East Pilbara
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/east-pilbara-2024-01?v=2026-10-26A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire east-pilbara-2024-01.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-01 | 32 | 438 | 43 | 29.3 | 15 | 29.1 | 47.5 | 0 | 82 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2024-01-02 | 150 | 5,085 | 44.9 | 27.3 | 10 | 26.5 | 49.3 | 0 | 78.8 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2024-01-03 | 120 | 1,912 | 42.7 | 27.1 | 11 | 23.9 | 39.6 | 0 | 74.8 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2024-01-04 | 7 | 134 | 39.8 | 26.1 | 16 | 29.2 | 47.2 | 0 | 79.6 | muy_extremo | 1 |
| 2024-01-05 | 0 | 0 | 41.2 | 27 | 16 | 22.6 | 35.6 | 1.6 | 57 | extremo | 1 |
| 2024-01-06 | 0 | 0 | 42.1 | 26.5 | 12 | 18.3 | 32 | 0 | 60.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-07 | 0 | 0 | 42.8 | 28.4 | 13 | 29.7 | 49.3 | 0 | 77.8 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-08 | 0 | 0 | 42.6 | 30.7 | 14 | 30.9 | 53.3 | 0 | 80.3 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-09 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 30.9 | 10 | 21.6 | 35.6 | 0 | 69.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-10 | 0 | 0 | 43.3 | 31.8 | 14 | 27.9 | 43.9 | 0 | 79.9 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-11 | 0 | 0 | 41.9 | 28.8 | 18 | 13.6 | 34.9 | 0 | 55.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-12 | 0 | 0 | 41.4 | 28.4 | 14 | 23.4 | 43.6 | 0 | 69.9 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-13 | 0 | 0 | 44.9 | 31.1 | 10 | 29.2 | 51.8 | 0 | 83.1 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-14 | 0 | 0 | 41.8 | 29.7 | 22 | 22.2 | 39.2 | 0.3 | 63.8 | extremo | 0 |
| 2024-01-15 | 0 | 0 | 40.6 | 27.3 | 21 | 23.1 | 47.9 | 0.5 | 64.5 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 7,781ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 1 Jan 2024 – 5 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 1 Jan
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 309
- in a single hotspot: 219 MW
- Danger at start
- 82
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Jan5 Jan
4 Jan 2024
How it evolved, day by day
1 Jan
2 Jan
3 Jan
4 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
45°high
49km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 558 ha in 2016, 1,069 ha in 2017, 11 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,492 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
East Pilbara where it started7,867 ha reached on 1 Jan0.0 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan | 43.0 °C | 15 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 82 |
| 2 Jan | 44.9 °C | 10 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 3 Jan | 42.7 °C | 11 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 4 Jan | 39.8 °C | 16 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 5 Jan | 41.2 °C | 16 % | 36 km/h | 1.6 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 6 Jan after | 42.1 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 7 Jan after | 42.8 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 78 |
| 8 Jan after | 42.6 °C | 14 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 9 Jan after | 44.0 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 10 Jan after | 43.3 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 80 |
| 11 Jan after | 41.9 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 12 Jan after | 41.4 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 13 Jan after | 44.9 °C | 10 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 14 Jan after | 41.8 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 15 Jan after | 40.6 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.5 mm | Extreme 64 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 82.0, a minimum humidity of 15% and 7 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 1.
FWI at the start
82.0
Minimum humidity
15 %
Days without rain
7
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · East Pilbara fire, 1 January 2024
7,781 ha
5 days
FWI 82.0
Min. humidity 15 %
Wiluna fire, January 2019
5,435 ha
4 days
FWI 91.2
Min. humidity 10 %
148 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 23 Jan.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
49km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 5 Jan, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2017.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 25 Dec 2023
After · 12 Jan 2024
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 1 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
WHO 15
30 Dec1 Jan3 Jan5 Jan7 Jan
Good
Fair
Moderate
Poor
Very poor
Extremely poor
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 309Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the East Pilbara fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 January 2024 to 5 January 2024 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 January 2024 to 4 January 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,781 hectares (77.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered East Pilbara (7,867 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 44.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 4 January 2024 → 5 January 2024.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 January 2024 to 4 January 2024. 309 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.