Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

MacDonnell fire, 19 March 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2023, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 19 March 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,151 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 409th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 194 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
27,151ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
19 Mar 2023 – 26 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
19 Mar
2023
Heat detections
1,015
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

27 Mar 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Mar26 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

19 Mar 2023 · 1,623 MW · 118 20 Mar 2023 · 2,382 MW · 250 21 Mar 2023 · 3,190 MW · 269 22 Mar 2023 · 1,791 MW · 273 23 Mar 2023 · 352 MW · 21 24 Mar 2023 · 338 MW · 43 25 Mar 2023 · 76 MW · 12 26 Mar 2023 · 135 MW · 19 27 Mar 2023 · 113 MW · 10
19 Mar 21 Mar 23 Mar 25 Mar 27 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

35°high
45km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.9 mm on 31 Mar.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 121 ha in 2018, 57 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    27,064 ha reached on 19 Mar
    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)
19 Mar 33.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Mar 33.9 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Mar 34.4 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Mar 34.5 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Mar 34.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Mar 35.0 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Mar 34.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Mar 34.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Mar after 33.3 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Mar after 33.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Mar after 32.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Mar after 30.4 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 39
31 Mar after 30.1 °C 38 % 44 km/h 5.9 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Mar 2023
After · 2 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 21 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1051 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
17181920212223242526272829
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 · 1,015Every 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 19 March 2023 and 26 March 2023: 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 27,151 hectares (271.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (27,064 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.

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.