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Litchfield fire, September 2017 Litchfield

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 04:52 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Litchfield, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,029 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2751th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 675 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2022

Burnt area
6,029ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
6 Sept 2017 – 27 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Sept
2017
Heat detections
244
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
164MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2017 · 1 MW · 1 7 Sept 2017 · 46 MW · 15 8 Sept 2017 · 93 MW · 17 9 Sept 2017 · 198 MW · 35 10 Sept 2017 · 269 MW · 29 11 Sept 2017 · 503 MW · 23 12 Sept 2017 · 16 MW · 2 13 Sept 2017 · 7 MW · 3 14 Sept 2017 · 5 MW · 6 15 Sept 2017 · 360 MW · 31 16 Sept 2017 · 237 MW · 20 17 Sept 2017 · 1,448 MW · 36 18 Sept 2017 · 28 MW · 6 19 Sept 2017 · 5 MW · 2 21 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 2 22 Sept 2017 · 14 MW · 5 23 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 3 24 Sept 2017 · 18 MW · 5 26 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 2 27 Sept 2017 · 5 MW · 1
6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 22 Sept 26 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.2 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,614 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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

  1. Litchfield where it started
    6,064 ha reached on 6 Sept
    2.1 %

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.

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)
6 Sept 35.9 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Sept 36.6 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Sept 34.9 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Sept 35.0 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Sept 35.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Sept 35.1 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept 33.9 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Sept 34.3 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept 35.7 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept 36.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Sept 36.5 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Sept 35.9 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept 35.7 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 35.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept 36.2 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept 35.9 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept 35.6 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 34.9 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Sept 34.8 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Sept 34.8 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Sept 35.0 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept 35.3 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Sept after 34.9 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
29 Sept after 34.1 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Sept after 32.8 °C 51 % 27 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 21
1 Oct after 34.3 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
2 Oct after 34.3 °C 47 % 27 km/h 9.2 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2017
After · 4 Oct 2017

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 · 244Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Litchfield fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2017 and 27 September 2017: 22 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 6,029 hectares (60.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Litchfield (6,064 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 244 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.