How long did the West Daly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 June 2017 and 20 June 2017: 16 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 25,872 hectares (258.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Daly (25,933 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 47 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.

AU · Australia · 2017-06-05 → 2017-06-20

West Daly fire, 5 June 2017 West Daly

Out · last detection 20 Jun 2017, 05:48 UTC

The fire started on 5 June 2017 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,872 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 439th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 71 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2016 West Daly · 2025 West Daly · 2021 West Daly · 2023

Burnt area: 25,872ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 5 Jun 2017 – 20 Jun 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 5 Jun; 2017
Heat detections: 882; in a single hotspot: 252 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 453MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jun20 Jun

Play back 20 Jun 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jun 6 Jun 8 Jun 11 Jun 14 Jun 17 Jun 20 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

47km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,188 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,948 ha that had burned before.

521 ha West Daly fire, November 2016 8,821 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (259 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

West Daly where it started

25,933 ha reached on 5 Jun

1.8 %

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)
5 Jun	31.3 °C	42 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Jun	30.0 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Jun	28.9 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Jun	28.1 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 Jun	27.7 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
10 Jun	28.0 °C	23 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Jun	27.8 °C	24 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Jun	27.6 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Jun	28.2 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Jun	29.1 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
15 Jun	29.3 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
16 Jun	29.8 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Jun	30.2 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Jun	30.7 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Jun	30.9 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Jun	31.1 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Jun after	30.7 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Jun after	30.8 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
23 Jun after	30.8 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Jun after	30.9 °C	34 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
25 Jun after	30.2 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Jun after	29.7 °C	43 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Jun after	29.9 °C	38 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Jun after	30.1 °C	45 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Jun after	30.7 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Jun after	29.6 °C	35 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
1 Jul after	29.4 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
2 Jul after	30.5 °C	44 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Jul after	31.7 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Jul after	31.3 °C	52 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
5 Jul after	30.4 °C	58 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
6 Jul after	29.4 °C	63 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 May 2017

After · 27 Jun 2017

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.

Detections table · 882Every 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 West Daly fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 June 2017 and 20 June 2017: 16 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 25,872 hectares (258.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Daly (25,933 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 47 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 882 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.

Where it burned