How long did the Laverton fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2025 to 21 January 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2025 to 19 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,857 hectares (58.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Laverton (5,915 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-01-08 → 2025-01-21

Laverton fire, January 2025 Laverton

Out · last detection 21 Jan 2025, 15:46 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2025 in Laverton, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,857 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2210th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 927 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Laverton · 2019 Maralinga Tjarutja · 2025 Laverton · 2019

Burnt area: 5,857ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 8 Jan 2025 – 21 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 8 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 308; in a single hotspot: 115 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 413MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan21 Jan

Play back 21 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 16 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 21 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

42°high

55km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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

5,915 ha reached on 8 Jan

0.0 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside 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)
8 Jan	40.5 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Jan	40.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
10 Jan	39.9 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Jan	33.0 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 41
12 Jan	36.5 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Jan	37.8 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Jan	36.3 °C	19 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
15 Jan	29.4 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Jan	31.2 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
17 Jan	38.0 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Jan	41.8 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
19 Jan	41.0 °C	9 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
20 Jan	40.2 °C	12 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
21 Jan	39.8 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
22 Jan after	37.6 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
23 Jan after	40.0 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
24 Jan after	38.8 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
25 Jan after	42.7 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
26 Jan after	44.8 °C	10 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 87
27 Jan after	34.0 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
28 Jan after	32.1 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
29 Jan after	33.0 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Jan 2025

After · 28 Jan 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 11 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1042 µg/m³

Optical depth0.31

WHO 15

678910111213141516171819202122

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 308Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2025 to 21 January 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2025 to 19 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,857 hectares (58.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Laverton (5,915 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 January 2025 to 19 January 2025. 308 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.

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