How long did the Wellington fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2026 to 25 January 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 63,414 hectares (634.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wellington (47,293 ha, 4.4 %); Alpine (15,872 ha, 3.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 81 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 · 2026-01-08 → 2026-01-25

Wellington fire, January 2026 Wellington, Alpine

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2026, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2026 in Wellington, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 63,414 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Victoria since 2016 (of 37 with a page). Number 22 in Australia in 2026, of 886.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wellington · 2019 Wellington · 2019 Alpine · 2019 Alpine · 2019

Burnt area: 63,414ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 8 Jan 2026 – 25 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 8 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 3,672; in a single hotspot: 389 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan25 Jan

Play back 25 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jan 9 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan 25 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

81km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 31 Jan.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,401 ha in 2016, 3,841 ha in 2017, 23,867 ha in 2019, 45 ha in 2020, 627 ha in 2024, 385 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 40% of the area of London (634 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

Wellington where it started

47,293 ha reached on 9 Jan

4.4 %
Alpine

15,872 ha reached on 8 Jan

3.3 %

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 area2.0 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of 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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
8 Jan	35.0 °C	24 %	67 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
9 Jan	35.1 °C	19 %	81 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Jan	25.9 °C	24 %	75 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Jan	19.3 °C	43 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 Jan	27.7 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
13 Jan	26.0 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
14 Jan	22.2 °C	63 %	44 km/h	1.2 mm	Low 8
15 Jan	27.4 °C	35 %	37 km/h	7.5 mm	Very low 3
16 Jan	17.4 °C	88 %	62 km/h	7.4 mm	Very low 0
17 Jan	18.9 °C	71 %	52 km/h	3.1 mm	Very low 0
18 Jan	20.7 °C	56 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
19 Jan	25.0 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 5
20 Jan	24.7 °C	49 %	35 km/h	8.9 mm	Very low 1
21 Jan	24.7 °C	46 %	38 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 2
22 Jan	18.6 °C	44 %	50 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 6
23 Jan	26.4 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Jan	31.2 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
25 Jan	34.0 °C	22 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Jan after	29.4 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
27 Jan after	36.0 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Jan after	35.0 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Jan after	31.3 °C	44 %	37 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
30 Jan after	35.0 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
31 Jan after	33.9 °C	33 %	65 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Jan 2026

After · 1 Feb 2026

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 11 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 269 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 136: 9.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak269 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM10272 µg/m³

Optical depth1.80

WHO 15

678910111213141516171819202122

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 · 3,672Every 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 Wellington fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 January 2026 to 25 January 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 63,414 hectares (634.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wellington (47,293 ha, 4.4 %); Alpine (15,872 ha, 3.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 81 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 19 January 2026 → 25 January 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?

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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 January 2026 to 19 January 2026. 3,672 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.

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.

Where it burned