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Unincorporated NT fire, April 2018 Victoria Daly, Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 29 Apr 2018, 04:39 UTC

The fire started on 28 April 2018 in Unincorporated NT, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,210 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2211th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3515 with a page). Number 590 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Victoria Daly · 2022Victoria Daly · 2020Victoria Daly · 2020Victoria Daly · 2020

Burnt area
7,210ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
28 Apr 2018 – 29 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
28 Apr
2018
Heat detections
210
in a single hotspot: 195 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Apr29 Apr
29 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

28 Apr 2018 · 3,571 MW · 193 29 Apr 2018 · 105 MW · 17
28 Apr 29 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,286 ha in 2016, 2,013 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,664 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (72 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. Victoria Daly
    7,069 ha reached on 28 Apr
    0.0 %
  2. Unincorporated NT where it started
    96 ha reached on 29 Apr
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
22 Apr 36.0 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Apr 35.5 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Apr 34.8 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Apr 34.5 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Apr 34.8 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Apr 34.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Apr 34.7 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
29 Apr 34.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Apr after 33.5 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 May after 34.3 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
2 May after 34.5 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
3 May after 35.0 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
4 May after 35.8 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 May after 34.6 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 May after 34.1 °C 28 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 May after 34.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 May after 34.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 May after 34.1 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 May after 34.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 May after 33.4 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 May after 30.1 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 May after 30.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Apr 2018
After · 6 May 2018

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 · 210Every 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 Unincorporated NT fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 April 2018 and 29 April 2018: 2 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 7,210 hectares (72.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (7,069 ha, 0.0 %); Unincorporated NT (96 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
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 · 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

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. 210 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.

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.