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MacDonnell fire, 14 September 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2023, 16:53 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,208 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1273th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 495 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2018MacDonnell · 2023MacDonnell · 2018MacDonnell · 2023

Burnt area
11,208ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
14 Sept 2023 – 20 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Sept
2023
Heat detections
576
in a single hotspot: 271 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2023 · 746 MW · 85 15 Sept 2023 · 8,594 MW · 258 16 Sept 2023 · 715 MW · 98 17 Sept 2023 · 312 MW · 39 18 Sept 2023 · 181 MW · 30 19 Sept 2023 · 239 MW · 55 20 Sept 2023 · 45 MW · 11
14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
42km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,472 ha in 2017, 96 ha in 2018, 269 ha in 2019, 88 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,539 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (112 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
    11,160 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
14 Sept 28.8 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Sept 30.4 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 30.6 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Sept 31.4 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Sept 31.6 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept 32.0 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Sept 33.0 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Sept after 32.2 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Sept after 31.6 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
23 Sept after 31.0 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Sept after 32.5 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Sept after 32.5 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Sept after 33.3 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Sept after 33.0 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
28 Sept after 31.9 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
29 Sept after 31.8 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
30 Sept after 33.9 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2023
After · 27 Sept 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 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1035 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
121314151617181920212223
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 · 576Every 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 14 September 2023 and 20 September 2023: 7 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 11,208 hectares (112.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (11,160 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 576 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.