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MacDonnell fire, 19 January 2019 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 27 Jan 2019, 15:31 UTC

The fire started on 19 January 2019 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 30,147 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 361th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 98 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
30,147ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
19 Jan 2019 – 27 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
19 Jan
2019
Heat detections
1,020
in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start
69
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
20.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jan27 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

192021222324252627

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
59km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 245 ha in 2017, 37 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    30,114 ha reached on 19 Jan
    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)
19 Jan 39.0 °C 15 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
20 Jan 40.4 °C 9 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
21 Jan 39.8 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
22 Jan 40.4 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Jan 40.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
24 Jan 41.3 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
25 Jan 38.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
26 Jan 38.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
27 Jan 34.8 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
28 Jan after 33.3 °C 23 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
29 Jan after 34.9 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Jan after 38.0 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
31 Jan after 38.1 °C 11 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
1 Feb after 35.4 °C 26 % 60 km/h 0.1 mm Very extreme 71
2 Feb after 33.0 °C 28 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
3 Feb after 34.2 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
4 Feb after 36.2 °C 19 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
5 Feb after 37.3 °C 14 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
6 Feb after 37.1 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jan 2019
After · 3 Feb 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 · 1,020Every 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 19 January 2019 and 27 January 2019: 9 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 30,147 hectares (301.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (30,114 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, 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.