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MacDonnell fire, 31 December 2018 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 4 Jan 2019, 16:03 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2018 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 519th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 115 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
22,541ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
31 Dec 2018 – 3 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Dec
2018
Heat detections
973
in a single hotspot: 253 MW
Danger at start
77
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
33.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec3 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

311234

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
50km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    22,578 ha reached on 31 Dec
    0.1 %

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)
31 Dec 43.2 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
1 Jan 42.4 °C 9 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
2 Jan 43.1 °C 7 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
3 Jan 44.1 °C 6 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
4 Jan after 43.9 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Jan after 37.5 °C 15 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
6 Jan after 36.3 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
7 Jan after 38.1 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Jan after 38.0 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Jan after 38.6 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
10 Jan after 40.4 °C 6 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
11 Jan after 43.5 °C 6 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
12 Jan after 41.8 °C 10 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
13 Jan after 42.7 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
14 Jan after 43.8 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Dec 2018
After · 10 Jan 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 · 973Every 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 MacDonnell fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 December 2018 and 3 January 2019: 4 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 22,541 hectares (225.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (22,578 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, 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.