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MacDonnell fire, 24 December 2023 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2023, 16:34 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2023 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,817 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2876th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 1039 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
5,817ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
24 Dec 2023 – 26 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Dec
2023
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 223 MW
Danger at start
79
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
9.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec26 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

242526

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
43km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 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.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    5,816 ha reached on 19 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)
24 Dec 39.1 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
25 Dec 39.4 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
26 Dec 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 61
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 84
31 Dec after 41.7 °C 7 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
1 Jan after 39.2 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
2 Jan after 40.9 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 68
3 Jan after 38.9 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.8 mm Extreme 64
4 Jan after 38.2 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Jan after 38.0 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Dec 2023
After · 2 Jan 2024

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 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 8 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak8 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1013 µg/m³
Optical depth0.19
2223242526272829
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 · 227Every 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 24 December 2023 and 26 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 5,817 hectares (58.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (5,816 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, 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

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.

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.