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Jerramungup fire, December 2018 Jerramungup

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2018, 16:19 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2018 in Jerramungup, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,023 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 898th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 337 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
11,023ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
20 Dec 2018 – 28 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Dec
2018
Heat detections
521
in a single hotspot: 409 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
18.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Dec 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec28 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

20212223242526272829

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
49km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 42 ha in 2016, 1,292 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 800 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Jerramungup where it started
    11,054 ha reached on 20 Dec
    1.7 %

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)
20 Dec 19.4 °C 57 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
21 Dec 21.9 °C 52 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
22 Dec 31.1 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
23 Dec 21.9 °C 68 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
24 Dec 19.7 °C 71 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
25 Dec 23.8 °C 59 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
26 Dec 22.0 °C 59 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
27 Dec 22.9 °C 52 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
28 Dec 18.9 °C 60 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
29 Dec after 20.2 °C 53 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
30 Dec after 25.1 °C 53 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
31 Dec after 23.9 °C 58 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
1 Jan after 22.4 °C 66 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
2 Jan after 24.6 °C 61 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
3 Jan after 20.0 °C 51 % 57 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
4 Jan after 19.7 °C 51 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Jan after 21.7 °C 55 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
6 Jan after 21.5 °C 61 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
7 Jan after 20.8 °C 69 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
8 Jan after 19.8 °C 59 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Dec 2018
After · 4 Jan 2019

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 · 521Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jerramungup fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 December 2018 and 28 December 2018: 9 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 11,023 hectares (110.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jerramungup (11,054 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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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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.