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MacDonnell fire, 26 February 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2023, 15:39 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 780th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 334 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
16,868ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
26 Feb 2023 – 16 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
26 Feb
2023
Heat detections
729
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
386MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb16 Mar
16 Mar 2023

How it evolved, day by day

26 Feb 2023 · 292 MW · 48 27 Feb 2023 · 81 MW · 24 28 Feb 2023 · 114 MW · 7 2 Mar 2023 · 14 MW · 5 3 Mar 2023 · 65 MW · 12 4 Mar 2023 · 190 MW · 33 5 Mar 2023 · 784 MW · 72 6 Mar 2023 · 181 MW · 24 7 Mar 2023 · 394 MW · 71 8 Mar 2023 · 243 MW · 43 9 Mar 2023 · 165 MW · 21 10 Mar 2023 · 52 MW · 6 11 Mar 2023 · 455 MW · 75 12 Mar 2023 · 1,236 MW · 100 13 Mar 2023 · 1,139 MW · 94 14 Mar 2023 · 1,319 MW · 67 15 Mar 2023 · 212 MW · 26 16 Mar 2023 · 1 MW · 1
26 Feb 2 Mar 5 Mar 8 Mar 11 Mar 14 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

38°high
56km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 120 ha in 2019, 458 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (169 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
    16,830 ha reached on 26 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)
26 Feb 33.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Feb 34.5 °C 18 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Feb 34.9 °C 18 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Mar 33.4 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Mar 31.3 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Mar 32.9 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Mar 34.3 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Mar 36.0 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Mar 36.0 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Mar 32.1 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Mar 29.4 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Mar 29.1 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Mar 31.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Mar 34.3 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Mar 35.6 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Mar 35.2 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Mar 35.8 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Mar 37.5 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Mar 38.5 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Mar after 37.0 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Mar after 36.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Mar after 34.1 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Mar after 34.5 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Mar after 35.0 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Mar after 35.0 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Mar after 35.3 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Mar after 35.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Mar after 34.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Mar after 34.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Feb 2023
After · 23 Mar 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 15 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10166 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
2812345678910111213141516171819
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 · 729Every 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 26 February 2023 to 16 March 2023 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 March 2023 to 16 March 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,868 hectares (168.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (16,830 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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: 2 March 2023 → 26 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
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 March 2023 to 16 March 2023. 729 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.