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MacDonnell fire, 14 October 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2023, 15:56 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,382 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 301th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 147 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2023MacDonnell · 2023MacDonnell · 2023

Burnt area
34,382ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
14 Oct 2023 – 24 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Oct
2023
Heat detections
1,312
in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct24 Oct
25 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 2023 · 838 MW · 34 15 Oct 2023 · 787 MW · 129 16 Oct 2023 · 2,612 MW · 176 17 Oct 2023 · 863 MW · 90 18 Oct 2023 · 317 MW · 25 19 Oct 2023 · 1,515 MW · 76 20 Oct 2023 · 1,726 MW · 152 21 Oct 2023 · 1,456 MW · 172 22 Oct 2023 · 1,131 MW · 185 23 Oct 2023 · 1,969 MW · 224 24 Oct 2023 · 504 MW · 35 25 Oct 2023 · 84 MW · 12
14 Oct 16 Oct 18 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 24 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

38°high
53km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 2 Nov.

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 22% of the area of London (344 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
    34,403 ha reached on 14 Oct
    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)
14 Oct 28.3 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Oct 30.4 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Oct 29.6 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Oct 28.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Oct 30.6 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Oct 34.2 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 36.3 °C 6 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Oct 32.0 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
22 Oct 31.1 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Oct 38.2 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Oct 33.4 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
25 Oct after 27.1 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Oct after 25.6 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
27 Oct after 27.2 °C 4 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
28 Oct after 31.1 °C 4 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Oct after 35.0 °C 5 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
30 Oct after 39.1 °C 4 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 96
31 Oct after 35.9 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
1 Nov after 35.1 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
2 Nov after 35.9 °C 16 % 50 km/h 2.1 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Oct 2023
After · 31 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 23 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10123 µg/m³
Optical depth0.77
12131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 1,312Every 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 October 2023 and 24 October 2023: 11 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 34,382 hectares (343.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (34,403 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,312 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.