How long did the MacDonnell fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 December 2023 and 20 December 2023: 3 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 5,783 hectares (57.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered MacDonnell (5,780 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 43.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 97, 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.

AU · Australia · 2023-12-18 → 2023-12-20

MacDonnell fire, 18 December 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 20 Dec 2023, 05:33 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,783 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2905th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 1049 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: MacDonnell · 2018 MacDonnell · 2017 MacDonnell · 2023 Ngaanyatjarraku · 2018

Burnt area: 5,783ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 18 Dec 2023 – 20 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Dec; 2023
Heat detections: 185; in a single hotspot: 338 MW
Danger at start: 82; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 927MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 20 Dec 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec20 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

18 Dec 19 Dec 20 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

44°high

64km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 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

MacDonnell where it started

5,780 ha reached on 18 Dec

0.0 %

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)
18 Dec	43.7 °C	10 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
19 Dec	39.7 °C	10 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 97
20 Dec	39.7 °C	11 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 87
21 Dec after	39.3 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
22 Dec after	42.0 °C	9 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
23 Dec after	43.0 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.3 mm	Very extreme 80
24 Dec after	39.1 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 80
25 Dec after	39.4 °C	14 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
26 Dec after	40.7 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
27 Dec after	42.1 °C	12 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 76
28 Dec after	42.0 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 62
29 Dec after	43.3 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 64
30 Dec after	43.4 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.1 mm	Very extreme 85

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Dec 2023

After · 27 Dec 2023

Before After

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 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1019 µg/m³

Optical depth0.20

1617181920212223

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 · 185Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the MacDonnell fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 December 2023 and 20 December 2023: 3 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 5,783 hectares (57.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered MacDonnell (5,780 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 43.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 97, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 185 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.

Where it burned