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AU · Australia · –

Plantagenet fire, November 2017 Plantagenet

Out · last detection 9 Nov 2017, 06:21 UTC

The fire started on 6 November 2017 in Plantagenet, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,116 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 145th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 427 with a page). Number 45 in Australia in 2017, of 116.

Burnt area
12,116ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
6 Nov 2017 – 9 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Nov
2017
Heat detections
640
in a single hotspot: 379 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
3.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Nov9 Nov
9 Nov 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Nov 2017 · 77 MW · 18 7 Nov 2017 · 10,545 MW · 233 8 Nov 2017 · 2,746 MW · 385 9 Nov 2017 · 33 MW · 4
6 Nov 7 Nov 8 Nov 9 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
42km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 13 Nov.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 780 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.7% of the area of London (121 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. Plantagenet where it started
    12,148 ha reached on 6 Nov
    2.5 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
6 Nov 23.4 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
7 Nov 29.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
8 Nov 30.4 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
9 Nov 29.4 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
10 Nov after 29.5 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
11 Nov after 29.1 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Nov after 20.0 °C 67 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
13 Nov after 14.3 °C 72 % 42 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 4

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 8.8, a minimum humidity of 43% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 26.

FWI at the start 8.8
Minimum humidity 43 %
Days without rain 10
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Plantagenet fire, October 2019
7,357 ha 7 days FWI 9.4 Min. humidity 48 % 12 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.6 mm on 30 Oct.

What happened to them

7 days
median duration
7,745 ha
median area
12 %
went past 10,000 ha
4.6 mm
rain at the end (median; 22 of 26 had it)

It was 1.6 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 4 days, against 7 days.

None of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 4 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.6 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.1 mmfirst rain
13 Nov4 days after it ended
42km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 9 Nov, and on 13 Nov 1.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 22 of 26, with a median of 4.6 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Oct 2017
After · 16 Nov 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 640Every 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 Plantagenet fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 November 2017 and 9 November 2017: 4 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 12,116 hectares (121.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Plantagenet (12,148 ha, 2.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 26. Their median duration was 7 days and their median area 7,745 ha; 12 % went past 10,000 ha. None of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 4 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.6 mm.

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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 640 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 2015, 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.