How long did the Waroona fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 March 2024 and 26 March 2024: 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 5,049 hectares (50.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Waroona (4,145 ha, 5.0 %); Murray (917 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 51 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-03-23 → 2024-03-26

Waroona fire, March 2024 Waroona, Murray

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2024, 06:34 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2024 in Waroona, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,049 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2691th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 631 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 5,049ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 23 Mar 2024 – 26 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 23 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 447; in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 8.5GW; sum of detected power

Play back 27 Mar 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar26 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

2324252627

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

51km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2016, 147 ha in 2017, 396 ha in 2018, 91 ha in 2020, 187 ha in 2021, 226 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 803 ha that had burned before.

4 ha Waroona fire, October 2016 5,559 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Waroona where it started

4,145 ha reached on 23 Mar

5.0 %
Murray

917 ha reached on 23 Mar

0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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	Danger (FWI)
23 Mar	26.5 °C	26 %	51 km/h	Very high 39
24 Mar	27.0 °C	24 %	42 km/h	High 37
25 Mar	27.4 °C	25 %	34 km/h	High 32
26 Mar	29.4 °C	20 %	28 km/h	High 34
27 Mar after	31.9 °C	18 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
28 Mar after	27.5 °C	30 %	35 km/h	High 34
29 Mar after	26.7 °C	33 %	32 km/h	High 31
30 Mar after	27.0 °C	46 %	37 km/h	High 28
31 Mar after	25.6 °C	37 %	45 km/h	High 33
1 Apr after	25.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	High 36
2 Apr after	26.2 °C	32 %	42 km/h	High 33
3 Apr after	27.1 °C	28 %	41 km/h	High 36
4 Apr after	28.9 °C	20 %	38 km/h	Very high 41
5 Apr after	30.5 °C	17 %	35 km/h	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Mar 2024

After · 2 Apr 2024

Before After

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 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 176 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 86: 5.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak176 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM10252 µg/m³

Optical depth2.80

WHO 15

212223242526272829

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 · 447Every 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

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Waroona fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 March 2024 and 26 March 2024: 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 5,049 hectares (50.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Waroona (4,145 ha, 5.0 %); Murray (917 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 51 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

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.

Where it burned