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Leonora fire, February 2019 Leonora

Out · last detection 1 Mar 2019, 16:54 UTC

The fire started on 24 February 2019 in Leonora, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,719 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1482th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 498 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
7,719ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
24 Feb 2019 – 28 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Feb
2019
Heat detections
417
in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start
84
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
3.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Mar 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Feb28 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

242526271

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
60km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 13 Mar.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 54 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Leonora where it started
    7,702 ha reached on 24 Feb
    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)
24 Feb 41.3 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.5 mm Very extreme 84
25 Feb 41.1 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
26 Feb 41.9 °C 6 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 99
27 Feb 42.9 °C 5 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 102
28 Feb 44.0 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Very extreme 94
1 Mar after 37.8 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
2 Mar after 35.0 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
3 Mar after 35.5 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
4 Mar after 37.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
5 Mar after 34.3 °C 16 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
6 Mar after 33.4 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
7 Mar after 38.6 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
8 Mar after 37.2 °C 16 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 89
9 Mar after 42.4 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
10 Mar after 40.1 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
11 Mar after 41.6 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
12 Mar after 39.9 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
13 Mar after 32.5 °C 29 % 48 km/h 1.3 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Feb 2019
After · 7 Mar 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 · 417Every 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 Leonora fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 February 2019 and 28 February 2019: 5 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 7,719 hectares (77.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Leonora (7,702 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.0 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 102, 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

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.