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AU · Australia · –

Victoria Daly fire, 30 September 2016 Katherine, Victoria Daly

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2016, 04:39 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2016 in Victoria Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 83,193 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

Burnt area
83,193ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
30 Sept 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
30 Sept
2016
Heat detections
2,683
in a single hotspot: 347 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
2.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept16 Oct
16 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2016 · 94 MW · 35 2 Oct 2016 · 292 MW · 29 3 Oct 2016 · 83 MW · 34 4 Oct 2016 · 2,568 MW · 177 5 Oct 2016 · 1,567 MW · 129 6 Oct 2016 · 382 MW · 58 7 Oct 2016 · 264 MW · 43 8 Oct 2016 · 134 MW · 27 9 Oct 2016 · 1,315 MW · 32 10 Oct 2016 · 39 MW · 13 11 Oct 2016 · 53 MW · 16 12 Oct 2016 · 5,566 MW · 810 13 Oct 2016 · 12,205 MW · 875 14 Oct 2016 · 3,986 MW · 305 15 Oct 2016 · 2,742 MW · 98 16 Oct 2016 · 38 MW · 2
30 Sept 5 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 21 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 53% of the area of London (832 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. 77,290 ha
    10 %
  2. Victoria Daly where it started
    6,494 ha
    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.

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)
30 Sept 36.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
1 Oct 34.5 °C 37 % 32 km/h 4.7 mm High 23
2 Oct 35.3 °C 35 % 27 km/h 6.1 mm Low 8
3 Oct 31.9 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
4 Oct 33.0 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Oct 34.7 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Oct 35.8 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Oct 36.1 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Oct 36.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Oct 36.4 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Oct 36.9 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Oct 36.6 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Oct 36.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Oct 35.6 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Oct 35.2 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Oct 35.7 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Oct 35.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Oct after 37.7 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Oct after 34.6 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
19 Oct after 36.7 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Oct after 36.9 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Oct after 35.7 °C 35 % 40 km/h 1.8 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2016
After · 23 Oct 2016

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 · 2,683Every 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 Victoria Daly fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2016 and 16 October 2016: 17 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 83,193 hectares (831.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Katherine (77,290 ha, 10 %); Victoria Daly (6,494 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Name: Katherine → Victoria Daly.

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
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,683 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.