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AU · Australia · –

Victoria Daly fire, 12 July 2024 Victoria Daly, Unincorporated NT

Out · last detection 24 Jul 2024, 04:51 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2024 in Victoria Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,700 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
6,700ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
12 Jul 2024 – 24 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
12 Jul
2024
Heat detections
245
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
75MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul24 Jul
24 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2024 · 4 MW · 1 13 Jul 2024 · 2 MW · 1 14 Jul 2024 · 138 MW · 22 15 Jul 2024 · 53 MW · 10 16 Jul 2024 · 36 MW · 21 17 Jul 2024 · 90 MW · 32 18 Jul 2024 · 100 MW · 33 19 Jul 2024 · 141 MW · 22 20 Jul 2024 · 19 MW · 12 21 Jul 2024 · 192 MW · 30 22 Jul 2024 · 102 MW · 38 23 Jul 2024 · 55 MW · 17 24 Jul 2024 · 49 MW · 6
12 Jul 15 Jul 18 Jul 21 Jul 24 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
48km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,234 ha in 2016, 4,504 ha in 2017, 1,768 ha in 2018, 4,828 ha in 2019, 292 ha in 2020, 3,564 ha in 2021, 6,348 ha in 2022, 3,032 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,717 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 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 where it started
    6,553 ha reached on 12 Jul
    0.0 %
  2. 115 ha reached on 14 Jul
    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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 8.2 % of the area in Australia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Jul 32.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Jul 32.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jul 31.0 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Jul 31.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jul 30.7 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Jul 27.6 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
18 Jul 26.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Jul 27.7 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Jul 29.3 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Jul 29.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
22 Jul 29.6 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
23 Jul 30.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
24 Jul 31.8 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jul after 31.9 °C 38 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Jul after 30.4 °C 56 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
27 Jul after 30.0 °C 51 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
28 Jul after 30.9 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul after 31.9 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Jul after 31.7 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Jul after 33.2 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Aug after 32.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug after 33.1 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Aug after 31.9 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2024
After · 31 Jul 2024

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 24 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1053 µg/m³
Optical depth0.80
10 Jul14 Jul18 Jul22 Jul26 Jul
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 · 245Every 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 12 July 2024 and 24 July 2024: 13 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 6,700 hectares (67.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Victoria Daly (6,553 ha, 0.0 %); Unincorporated NT (115 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 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. 245 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
  • 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.