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MacDonnell fire, 24 September 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 3 Oct 2023, 16:09 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,538 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 804th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 340 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2017MacDonnell · 2022MacDonnell · 2026MacDonnell · 2022

Burnt area
16,538ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
24 Sept 2023 – 5 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Sept
2023
Heat detections
519
in a single hotspot: 228 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
397MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept5 Oct
3 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 2023 · 34 MW · 20 25 Sept 2023 · 393 MW · 48 26 Sept 2023 · 986 MW · 84 27 Sept 2023 · 1,465 MW · 201 28 Sept 2023 · 316 MW · 42 29 Sept 2023 · 58 MW · 31 30 Sept 2023 · 466 MW · 47 1 Oct 2023 · 13 MW · 7 2 Oct 2023 · 19 MW · 10 3 Oct 2023 · 217 MW · 29
24 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
55km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,739 ha in 2017, 805 ha in 2018, 290 ha in 2019, 582 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (165 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
    16,515 ha reached on 24 Sept
    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.

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)
24 Sept 30.6 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Sept 30.6 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Sept 31.4 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Sept 30.3 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
28 Sept 30.1 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
29 Sept 30.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Sept 32.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Oct 34.0 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
2 Oct 34.4 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
3 Oct 31.9 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
4 Oct 22.4 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
5 Oct 25.0 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
6 Oct after 26.0 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
7 Oct after 25.6 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
8 Oct after 25.8 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Oct after 27.4 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Oct after 28.9 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
11 Oct after 30.9 °C 6 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Oct after 31.7 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
13 Oct after 28.2 °C 12 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Sept 2023
After · 12 Oct 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 29 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1076 µg/m³
Optical depth0.91
222324252627282930123456
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 · 519Every 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 24 September 2023 to 5 October 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 September 2023 to 3 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,538 hectares (165.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (16,515 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, class Very 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 September 2023 to 3 October 2023. 519 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.