How long did the Esperance fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 December 2019 and 22 December 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 13,064 hectares (130.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Esperance (13,108 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-12-19 → 2019-12-22

Esperance fire, 19 December 2019 Esperance

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2019, 04:46 UTC

The fire started on 19 December 2019 in Esperance, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,064 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 695th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 288 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Esperance · 2017

Burnt area: 13,064ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 19 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 19 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 600; in a single hotspot: 610 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 7.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Dec22 Dec

Play back 22 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Dec 20 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec

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

60km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 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?

It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (131 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

Esperance where it started

13,108 ha reached on 19 Dec

0.3 %

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.

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)
19 Dec	39.7 °C	16 %	60 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 46
20 Dec	25.2 °C	42 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Dec	24.1 °C	56 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Dec	30.9 °C	39 %	45 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
23 Dec after	26.4 °C	61 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
24 Dec after	24.1 °C	61 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Dec after	23.8 °C	66 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
26 Dec after	30.3 °C	44 %	48 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
27 Dec after	27.9 °C	41 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Dec after	25.9 °C	45 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
29 Dec after	36.8 °C	24 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Dec after	23.9 °C	37 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Dec after	25.7 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
1 Jan after	28.4 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Jan after	33.0 °C	24 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Jan after	22.4 °C	43 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Jan after	19.9 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Jan after	25.0 °C	33 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Jan after	31.4 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Jan after	33.0 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Jan after	37.3 °C	25 %	55 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Dec 2019

After · 29 Dec 2019

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 · 600Every 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

26,089 haEsperance26 December 2017 · 20 days · 34 km away

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Esperance fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 December 2019 and 22 December 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 13,064 hectares (130.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Esperance (13,108 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 600 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.

Where it burned