Katherine fire, 14 August 2025 Katherine
The fire started on 14 August 2025 in Katherine, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,742 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2028th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3511 with a page). Number 654 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,742ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 14 Aug 2025 – 21 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 14 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 389
- in a single hotspot: 334 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 470MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,554 ha in 2016, 74 ha in 2017, 4,246 ha in 2018, 74 ha in 2019, 281 ha in 2021, 3,427 ha in 2022, 1,971 ha in 2023, 510 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,659 ha that had burned before.
- 6,307 ha Katherine fire, September 2016 83,250 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,246 ha Katherine fire, August 2018 111,224 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,075 ha Katherine fire, July 2022 17,901 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 265 ha Victoria Daly fire, September 2024 8,452 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Katherine where it started7,794 ha reached on 14 Aug1.0 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Aug | 32.3 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 15 Aug | 30.9 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Aug | 30.9 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Aug | 30.7 °C | 15 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Aug | 29.0 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Aug | 28.8 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Aug | 29.2 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 21 Aug | 31.0 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 Aug after | 35.8 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Aug after | 36.0 °C | 18 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Aug after | 34.9 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 28 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 26 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 29 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 18 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 81 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 389Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 83,250 haKatherineSeptember 2016 · 17 days · 9 km away
- 111,224 haKatherine15 August 2018 · 11 days · 21 km away
- 63,294 haVictoria Daly29 September 2025 · 14 days · 24 km away
- 57,920 haKatherine30 September 2024 · 8 days · 28 km away
- 138,097 haKatherine7 August 2025 · 22 days · 30 km away
- 57,978 haKatherineSeptember 2026 · 6 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Katherine fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 August 2025 to 21 August 2025 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 August 2025 to 19 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,742 hectares (77.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Katherine (7,794 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 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: 19 August 2025 → 21 August 2025.
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 14 August 2025 to 19 August 2025. 389 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.
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.