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MacDonnell fire, 17 April 2022 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 19 Apr 2022, 04:30 UTC

The fire started on 17 April 2022 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,118 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3379th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 548 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Desert · 2023MacDonnell · 2017

Burnt area
5,118ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
17 Apr 2022 – 19 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Apr
2022
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
721MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

19 Apr 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Apr19 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

17 Apr 2022 · 181 MW · 36 18 Apr 2022 · 1,970 MW · 117 19 Apr 2022 · 10 MW · 4
17 Apr 18 Apr 19 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 952 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. MacDonnell where it started
    5,093 ha reached on 17 Apr
    0.0 %

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)
17 Apr 35.7 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Apr 31.7 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Apr 28.7 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Apr after 29.1 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Apr after 29.0 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Apr after 28.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Apr after 27.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Apr after 28.6 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Apr after 28.2 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Apr after 29.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Apr after 31.9 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Apr after 33.3 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Apr after 34.3 °C 18 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Apr 2022
After · 26 Apr 2022

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 · 157Every 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 17 April 2022 and 19 April 2022: 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 5,118 hectares (51.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (5,093 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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

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.

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. 157 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.