How long did the West Daly fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2017 and 13 September 2017: 11 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 17,725 hectares (177.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered West Daly (17,863 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.

AU · Australia · 2017-09-03 → 2017-09-13

West Daly fire, September 2017 West Daly

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2017, 16:44 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,725 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 722th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 138 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2016 West Daly · 2019 West Daly · 2021 West Daly · 2018

Burnt area: 17,725ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 3 Sept 2017 – 13 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 3 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 562; in a single hotspot: 129 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 429MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept13 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

53km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,345 ha in 2016.

4,034 ha West Daly fire, June 2016 81,588 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (177 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

17,863 ha reached on 3 Sept

1.3 %

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 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)
2 Sept	35.0 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
3 Sept	35.4 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Sept	35.4 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
5 Sept	35.9 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
6 Sept	36.3 °C	7 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
7 Sept	35.1 °C	6 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
8 Sept	33.7 °C	5 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
9 Sept	34.7 °C	6 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
10 Sept	35.4 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
11 Sept	36.0 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
12 Sept	35.6 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Sept	35.6 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
14 Sept after	35.9 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Sept after	36.2 °C	6 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
16 Sept after	36.3 °C	5 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
17 Sept after	35.8 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
18 Sept after	36.2 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
19 Sept after	36.6 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
20 Sept after	35.7 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Sept after	35.5 °C	23 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
22 Sept after	32.6 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
23 Sept after	34.4 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
24 Sept after	34.9 °C	38 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Sept after	36.2 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Sept after	37.0 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Sept after	35.4 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Sept after	35.8 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Sept after	35.1 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Sept after	34.1 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Aug 2017

After · 20 Sept 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 · 562Every 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 3 September 2017 and 13 September 2017: 11 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 17,725 hectares (177.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered West Daly (17,863 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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

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.

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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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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. 562 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