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MacDonnell fire, 27 February 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2023, 04:57 UTC

The fire started on 27 February 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,019 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 435th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 203 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2019MacDonnell · 2023MacDonnell · 2019MacDonnell · 2023

Burnt area
26,019ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
27 Feb 2023 – 25 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
27 Feb
2023
Heat detections
1,041
in a single hotspot: 348 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
507MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Feb25 Mar
25 Mar 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Feb 2023 · 254 MW · 53 28 Feb 2023 · 260 MW · 22 1 Mar 2023 · 86 MW · 7 2 Mar 2023 · 81 MW · 17 3 Mar 2023 · 513 MW · 55 4 Mar 2023 · 424 MW · 47 5 Mar 2023 · 514 MW · 38 6 Mar 2023 · 521 MW · 54 7 Mar 2023 · 192 MW · 37 8 Mar 2023 · 167 MW · 26 9 Mar 2023 · 81 MW · 15 10 Mar 2023 · 98 MW · 13 11 Mar 2023 · 486 MW · 39 12 Mar 2023 · 447 MW · 37 15 Mar 2023 · 2,768 MW · 106 16 Mar 2023 · 2,494 MW · 167 17 Mar 2023 · 1,178 MW · 114 18 Mar 2023 · 358 MW · 46 19 Mar 2023 · 393 MW · 33 20 Mar 2023 · 423 MW · 39 21 Mar 2023 · 585 MW · 31 22 Mar 2023 · 118 MW · 23 23 Mar 2023 · 162 MW · 16 24 Mar 2023 · 29 MW · 4 25 Mar 2023 · 49 MW · 2
27 Feb 3 Mar 7 Mar 11 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 21 Mar 25 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
57km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 30 Mar.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,932 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (260 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
    25,984 ha reached on 27 Feb
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
27 Feb 34.5 °C 18 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Feb 35.1 °C 18 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Mar 33.7 °C 21 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Mar 31.1 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Mar 33.0 °C 11 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
4 Mar 34.5 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Mar 36.2 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Mar 36.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
7 Mar 32.0 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
8 Mar 29.5 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
9 Mar 29.1 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Mar 31.4 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Mar 34.5 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
12 Mar 36.0 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Mar 35.4 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Mar 36.0 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Mar 37.8 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Mar 38.6 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Mar 37.3 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Mar 36.7 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Mar 34.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Mar 34.8 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Mar 35.2 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Mar 35.1 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Mar 35.6 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Mar 35.6 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Mar 35.0 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Mar after 35.0 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Mar after 34.1 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Mar after 34.4 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Mar after 32.1 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 50
30 Mar after 30.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 1.5 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Feb 2023
After · 1 Apr 2023

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 16 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1096 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
272812345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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 · 1,041Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 February 2023 to 25 March 2023 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2023 to 25 March 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,019 hectares (260.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (25,984 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 1 March 2023 → 27 February 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 March 2023 to 25 March 2023. 1,041 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.