How long did the MacDonnell fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2018 and 20 July 2018: 3 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 11,128 hectares (111.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered MacDonnell (11,258 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 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 · 2018-07-18 → 2018-07-20

MacDonnell fire, 18 July 2018 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2018, 16:53 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2018 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,128 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1278th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 334 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2019 MacDonnell · 2018 MacDonnell · 2017 MacDonnell · 2022

Burnt area: 11,128ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 18 Jul 2018 – 20 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 398; in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.8GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul20 Jul

Play back 20 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

46km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 409 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7% of the area of London (111 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

MacDonnell where it started

11,258 ha reached on 18 Jul

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.

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)
18 Jul	24.9 °C	13 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Jul	23.4 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Jul	19.5 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Jul after	23.9 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Jul after	28.4 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
23 Jul after	25.9 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 Jul after	24.8 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Jul after	25.4 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Jul after	28.1 °C	17 %	69 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 78
27 Jul after	19.8 °C	33 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Jul after	20.2 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Jul after	20.1 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Jul after	24.1 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
31 Jul after	25.1 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
1 Aug after	27.0 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 55
2 Aug after	21.2 °C	28 %	74 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jul 2018

After · 27 Jul 2018

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 · 398Every 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 MacDonnell fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2018 and 20 July 2018: 3 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 11,128 hectares (111.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered MacDonnell (11,258 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 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.

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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.

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What really happened?

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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. 398 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