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MacDonnell fire, 16 September 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2023, 17:12 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,415 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2122th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 803 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2023MacDonnell · 2019MacDonnell · 2025

Burnt area
7,415ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
16 Sept 2023 – 19 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Sept
2023
Heat detections
255
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
631MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept19 Sept
19 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2023 · 1,425 MW · 134 17 Sept 2023 · 367 MW · 43 18 Sept 2023 · 396 MW · 37 19 Sept 2023 · 336 MW · 40
16 Sept 17 Sept 18 Sept 19 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
44km/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

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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
    7,421 ha reached on 15 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.

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)
15 Sept 31.5 °C 8 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Sept 31.8 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Sept 32.8 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Sept 32.5 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Sept 33.0 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
20 Sept after 33.4 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Sept after 29.3 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
22 Sept after 28.8 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Sept after 29.0 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Sept after 31.2 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Sept after 31.9 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Sept after 32.7 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Sept after 31.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Sept after 31.3 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
29 Sept after 31.5 °C 16 % 43 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 · 9 Sept 2023
After · 26 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 17 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak112 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10161 µg/m³
Optical depth1.45
141516171819202122
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 · 255Every 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 16 September 2023 and 19 September 2023: 4 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 7,415 hectares (74.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (7,421 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 255 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.