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West Daly fire, 21 June 2016 West Daly, Victoria Daly

Out · last detection 12 Jul 2016, 17:28 UTC

The fire started on 21 June 2016 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 81,588 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 83th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 9 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2021West Daly · 2018West Daly · 2019West Daly · 2017

Burnt area
81,588ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
21 Jun 2016 – 11 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
21 Jun
2016
Heat detections
2,804
in a single hotspot: 93 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
977MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jun11 Jul
12 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jun 2016 · 31 MW · 9 22 Jun 2016 · 20 MW · 5 23 Jun 2016 · 11 MW · 7 24 Jun 2016 · 35 MW · 17 25 Jun 2016 · 42 MW · 11 26 Jun 2016 · 93 MW · 10 27 Jun 2016 · 15 MW · 2 28 Jun 2016 · 3,362 MW · 234 29 Jun 2016 · 2,075 MW · 230 30 Jun 2016 · 1,381 MW · 205 1 Jul 2016 · 1,997 MW · 247 2 Jul 2016 · 1,035 MW · 177 3 Jul 2016 · 1,473 MW · 209 4 Jul 2016 · 2,647 MW · 325 5 Jul 2016 · 3,156 MW · 376 6 Jul 2016 · 2,042 MW · 304 7 Jul 2016 · 1,160 MW · 234 8 Jul 2016 · 478 MW · 110 9 Jul 2016 · 171 MW · 42 10 Jul 2016 · 217 MW · 38 11 Jul 2016 · 59 MW · 10 12 Jul 2016 · 2 MW · 2
21 Jun 25 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 3 Jul 7 Jul 11 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

34°high
44km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 52% of the area of London (816 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. West Daly where it started
    82,161 ha reached on 21 Jun
    5.8 %
  2. Victoria Daly
    9 ha reached on 28 Jun
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
21 Jun 31.0 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jun 32.1 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Jun 33.2 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Jun 34.0 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jun 32.5 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Jun 33.0 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jun 32.6 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jun 31.6 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jun 30.9 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Jun 31.5 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Jul 31.2 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Jul 30.2 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Jul 30.2 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Jul 31.1 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Jul 32.6 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Jul 31.9 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jul 30.2 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Jul 31.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Jul 32.3 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jul 33.3 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Jul 31.9 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jul after 32.5 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jul after 26.1 °C 38 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jul after 26.4 °C 37 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Jul after 25.2 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Jul after 25.4 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jul after 26.4 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Jul after 28.0 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Jul after 29.0 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jul after 30.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul after 31.8 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2016
After · 18 Jul 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 · 2,804Every 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 West Daly fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 June 2016 to 11 July 2016 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 June 2016 to 10 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 81,588 hectares (815.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: West Daly (82,161 ha, 5.8 %); Victoria Daly (9 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 July 2016 → 11 July 2016.
  2. Start date: 28 June 2016 → 21 June 2016.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 June 2016 to 10 July 2016. 2,804 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 2015, 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.