How long did the Laverton fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 January 2019 and 11 January 2019: 11 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 35,884 hectares (358.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Laverton (35,895 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 44.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-01-01 → 2019-01-11

Laverton fire, 1 January 2019 Laverton

Out · last detection 11 Jan 2019, 05:57 UTC

The fire started on 1 January 2019 in Laverton, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 35,884 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 132th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 81 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Laverton · 2019 Laverton · 2019

Burnt area: 35,884ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 1 Jan 2019 – 11 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 1 Jan; 2019
Heat detections: 2,589; in a single hotspot: 341 MW
Danger at start: 70; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 5.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jan11 Jan

Play back 11 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jan 3 Jan 5 Jan 7 Jan 9 Jan 10 Jan 11 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

58km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 176 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (359 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

Laverton where it started

35,895 ha reached on 1 Jan

0.2 %

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)
1 Jan	42.0 °C	8 %	58 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 70
2 Jan	43.9 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
3 Jan	43.7 °C	7 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
4 Jan	33.9 °C	15 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
5 Jan	32.4 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
6 Jan	31.4 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
7 Jan	35.8 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
8 Jan	38.3 °C	10 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
9 Jan	40.2 °C	8 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
10 Jan	42.5 °C	8 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
11 Jan	42.2 °C	10 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
12 Jan after	41.6 °C	10 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
13 Jan after	44.6 °C	9 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
14 Jan after	44.1 °C	7 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
15 Jan after	43.1 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
16 Jan after	39.6 °C	18 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 Jan after	41.4 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 66
18 Jan after	35.6 °C	22 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
19 Jan after	33.8 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 50
20 Jan after	37.0 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Jan after	40.1 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
22 Jan after	44.1 °C	9 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
23 Jan after	42.6 °C	18 %	67 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 92

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Dec 2018

After · 18 Jan 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 · 2,589Every 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

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Laverton fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 January 2019 and 11 January 2019: 11 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 35,884 hectares (358.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Laverton (35,895 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 44.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,589 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