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Esperance fire, 24 January 2020 Esperance

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2020, 06:39 UTC

The fire started on 24 January 2020 in Esperance, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,449 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1924th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 225 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
6,449ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
24 Jan 2020 – 2 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Jan
2020
Heat detections
574
in a single hotspot: 381 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
26.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Feb 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jan2 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

242628293012

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

The weather it burned in

44°high
63km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.0 mm on 11 Feb.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 84 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Esperance where it started
    6,403 ha reached on 24 Jan
    0.1 %

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)
24 Jan 28.8 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Jan 32.1 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jan 34.1 °C 29 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Jan 37.2 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jan 42.6 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Jan 44.2 °C 5 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
30 Jan 34.6 °C 30 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Jan 25.0 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Feb 26.7 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Feb 28.1 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Feb after 26.6 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Feb after 28.3 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Feb after 29.6 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Feb after 30.4 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Feb after 32.4 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Feb after 37.0 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Feb after 29.3 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Feb after 27.5 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Feb after 21.3 °C 60 % 40 km/h 8.0 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jan 2020
After · 9 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 · 574Every 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 Esperance fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 January 2020 and 2 February 2020: 10 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 6,449 hectares (64.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Esperance (6,403 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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
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.