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MacDonnell fire, January 2026 MacDonnell

Out · last detection 20 Jan 2026, 15:25 UTC

The fire started on 14 January 2026 in MacDonnell, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,389 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 428th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3493 with a page). Number 92 in Australia in 2026, of 848.

Burnt area
26,389ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
14 Jan 2026 – 20 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Jan
2026
Heat detections
724
in a single hotspot: 261 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
10.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jan20 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

14151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
54km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,370 ha in 2017, 10 ha in 2018, 7,060 ha in 2019, 331 ha in 2021, 6,696 ha in 2022, 2,816 ha in 2023, 161 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,749 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. MacDonnell where it started
    26,357 ha reached on 13 Jan
    0.1 %

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)
13 Jan 38.5 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
14 Jan 38.7 °C 9 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
15 Jan 39.1 °C 8 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
16 Jan 37.6 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
17 Jan 37.8 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
18 Jan 38.2 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
19 Jan 38.7 °C 6 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
20 Jan 36.6 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
21 Jan after 32.8 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
22 Jan after 36.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
23 Jan after 38.6 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
24 Jan after 37.3 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
25 Jan after 38.5 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Jan after 36.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Jan after 37.3 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Jan after 39.0 °C 11 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
29 Jan after 37.7 °C 13 % 75 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 92
30 Jan after 38.3 °C 15 % 52 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 · 7 Jan 2026
After · 27 Jan 2026

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 12 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM10161 µg/m³
Optical depth0.18
121314151617181920212223
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 · 724Every 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 January 2026 and 20 January 2026: 7 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 26,389 hectares (263.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MacDonnell (26,357 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, 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
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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.