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West Daly fire, April 2018 West Daly

Out · last detection 30 Apr 2018, 17:09 UTC

The fire started on 24 April 2018 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,330 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1134th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 284 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
12,330ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
24 Apr 2018 – 30 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Apr
2018
Heat detections
344
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Apr 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Apr30 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930

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
32km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,384 ha in 2016, 1,032 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,601 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. West Daly where it started
    12,435 ha reached on 23 Apr
    0.9 %

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Apr 34.7 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Apr 32.9 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
24 Apr 33.5 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
25 Apr 33.1 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Apr 32.9 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
27 Apr 32.5 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Apr 33.0 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Apr 31.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Apr 30.9 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 May after 32.2 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 May after 31.7 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 May after 30.8 °C 60 % 24 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 12
4 May after 33.4 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 May after 32.8 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 May after 32.3 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 May after 32.0 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 May after 32.1 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 May after 32.2 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 May after 32.2 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Apr 2018
After · 7 May 2018

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 · 344Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 April 2018 and 30 April 2018: 7 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 12,330 hectares (123.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Daly (12,435 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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

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
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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.