Burned area
satellite only648ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019 – 18 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
NZ · New Zealand ·
Selwyn District fire, February 2019 Selwyn District
Out · last detection 18 Feb 2019, 02:17 UTC
The fire started on 18 February 2019 in Selwyn District, New Zealand, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 648 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 11th largest in Canterbury Region since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 4 in New Zealand in 2019, of 42.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only1day
18 Feb 2019 to 18 Feb 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 18 Feb 2019, 02:17 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only18 Feb 2019
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only25
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 129 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019 – 18 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,115MW
Total radiative power on 18 February 2019; hotspots that day: 25.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model11.5FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 1.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model26.3°C · 33% RH
High of 26.3 °C and minimum humidity of 33% on 18 February 2019; gusts of 25 km/h on 18 February 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 18 Feb 2019 – 18 Feb 2019
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 30people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 2.0 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 648 ha
- Dates
- 18 Feb 2019 – 18 Feb 2019
- Name
- Selwyn District
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/selwyn-district-2019-02?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire selwyn-district-2019-02.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-02-18 | 25 | 1,115 | 26.3 | 9.5 | 33 | 11.8 | 24.8 | 0.2 | 11.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-02-19 | 0 | 0 | 27.1 | 14.8 | 41 | 19.9 | 37.4 | 0 | 15 | moderado | 0 |
| 2019-02-20 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 15.8 | 44 | 19.2 | 38.5 | 0 | 15.2 | moderado | 0 |
| 2019-02-21 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 13.5 | 47 | 22.2 | 45.7 | 0 | 16.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2019-02-22 | 0 | 0 | 23.5 | 10.6 | 44 | 18.6 | 42.5 | 0 | 15.4 | moderado | 0 |
| 2019-02-23 | 0 | 0 | 18.2 | 7.3 | 48 | 24.2 | 50 | 6.2 | 2.1 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 648ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 18 Feb 2019 – 18 Feb 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Feb
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 25
- in a single hotspot: 129 MW
- Danger at start
- 12
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
18 Feb18 Feb
How it evolved, day by day
18 Feb 2019 · 1,115 MW · 25
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
26°high
25km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 23 Feb.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Selwyn District where it started649 ha reached on 18 Feb0.1 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area2.0 ha
Residents≈ 30
Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Feb | 26.3 °C | 33 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 19 Feb after | 27.1 °C | 41 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 20 Feb after | 26.0 °C | 44 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 21 Feb after | 25.6 °C | 47 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 22 Feb after | 23.5 °C | 44 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 23 Feb after | 18.2 °C | 48 % | 50 km/h | 6.2 mm | Very low 2 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 11.5, a minimum humidity of 33% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.
FWI at the start
11.5
Minimum humidity
33 %
Days without rain
1
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Selwyn District fire, February 2019
648 ha
1 day
FWI 11.5
Min. humidity 33 %
Christchurch City fire, February 2024
698 ha
1 day
FWI 12.7
Min. humidity 28 %
47 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.0 mm on 20 Feb.
Timaru District fire, March 2016
327 ha
1 day
FWI 5.5
Min. humidity 34 %
130 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 36.3 mm on 15 Mar.
Ashburton District fire, February 2024
383 ha
1 day
FWI 5.4
Min. humidity 36 %
49 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 19 Feb.
Christchurch City fire, February 2017
3,104 ha
4 days
FWI 4.4
Min. humidity 35 %
47 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.3 mm on 17 Feb.
Central Otago District fire, March 2019
348 ha
1 day
FWI 10.6
Min. humidity 39 %
249 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.4 mm on 7 Mar.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
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
6.2 mmfirst rain
23 Feb5 days after it ended
25km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 18 Feb, and on 23 Feb 6.2 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 11 Feb 2019
After · 25 Feb 2019
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 25Every 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
- 378 haWaimakariri DistrictMay 2021 · 3 days · 29 km away
- 381 haSelwyn DistrictAugust 2019 · 2 days · 30 km away
- 533 haSelwyn DistrictMarch 2021 · 1 day · 32 km away
- 590 haChristchurch City25 October 2026 · 7 days · 35 km away
- 398 haChristchurch City17 October 2026 · 1 day · 35 km away
- 432 haAshburton District5 March 2026 · 4 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Selwyn District fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 February 2019 and 18 February 2019: 1 day 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 648 hectares (6.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Selwyn District (649 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.3 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 25 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of New Zealand (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: 111 · 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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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. 25 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.