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MacDonnell fire, 7 October 2022 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2022, 04:56 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2022 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 646th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 62 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
19,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
7 Oct 2022 – 16 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Oct
2022
Heat detections
870
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Energy released
11.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Oct 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct16 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

789101112141516

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
65km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,010 ha in 2017, 1,004 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    19,178 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 30.9 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Oct 33.3 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Oct 27.8 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Oct 24.1 °C 25 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Oct 26.2 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 29.2 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Oct 33.9 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Oct 37.0 °C 12 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
13 Oct 20.1 °C 38 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Oct 26.3 °C 21 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct 30.2 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
16 Oct 32.3 °C 26 % 50 km/h 1.1 mm Very high 42
17 Oct after 32.6 °C 29 % 55 km/h 2.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Sept 2022
After · 23 Oct 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.

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
5678910111213141516171819
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 · 870Every 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 7 October 2022 and 16 October 2022: 10 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 19,188 hectares (191.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (19,178 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, 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.