How long did the MacDonnell fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 October 2022 and 12 October 2022: 8 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 22,743 hectares (227.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered MacDonnell (22,736 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 64 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-10-05 → 2022-10-12

MacDonnell fire, 5 October 2022 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2022, 15:44 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2022 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,743 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 511th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 45 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2017 MacDonnell · 2022 MacDonnell · 2023 MacDonnell · 2023

Burnt area: 22,743ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 5 Oct 2022 – 12 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 5 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 911; in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct12 Oct

Play back 12 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

64km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 979 ha in 2017.

845 ha MacDonnell fire, October 2017 17,915 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (227 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

22,736 ha reached on 5 Oct

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)
5 Oct	32.0 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Oct	34.2 °C	12 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
7 Oct	28.2 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
8 Oct	24.6 °C	25 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Oct	26.6 °C	11 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Oct	29.6 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
11 Oct	34.4 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
12 Oct	37.8 °C	12 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
13 Oct after	20.7 °C	39 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Oct after	26.6 °C	21 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Oct after	30.9 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
16 Oct after	33.1 °C	26 %	50 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 45
17 Oct after	33.7 °C	28 %	57 km/h	2.2 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Sept 2022

After · 19 Oct 2022

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 10 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM10100 µg/m³

Optical depth0.73

WHO 15

3456789101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 911Every 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 5 October 2022 and 12 October 2022: 8 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 22,743 hectares (227.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered MacDonnell (22,736 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 64 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 911 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