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West Daly fire, 3 June 2018 West Daly

Out · last detection 7 Jun 2018, 05:48 UTC

The fire started on 3 June 2018 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,851 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2343th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 632 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2017West Daly · 2016West Daly · 2019West Daly · 2021

Burnt area
6,851ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
3 Jun 2018 – 6 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
3 Jun
2018
Heat detections
234
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
703MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

7 Jun 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jun6 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

3 Jun 2018 · 2,893 MW · 133 4 Jun 2018 · 284 MW · 52 5 Jun 2018 · 82 MW · 15 6 Jun 2018 · 216 MW · 6 7 Jun 2018 · 41 MW · 5
3 Jun 4 Jun 5 Jun 6 Jun 7 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
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,144 ha in 2016, 2,440 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,569 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (69 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
    6,903 ha reached on 30 May
    0.5 %

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)
30 May 30.9 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 May 30.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Jun 30.1 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Jun 29.6 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jun 29.2 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Jun 28.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Jun 27.9 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jun 27.8 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Jun after 30.3 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Jun after 30.5 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jun after 29.7 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Jun after 32.3 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Jun after 31.3 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jun after 30.5 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jun after 29.2 °C 58 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Jun after 29.2 °C 52 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
15 Jun after 30.8 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Jun after 30.8 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jun after 28.9 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 May 2018
After · 13 Jun 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 · 234Every 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 3 June 2018 and 6 June 2018: 4 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 6,851 hectares (68.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Daly (6,903 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % 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

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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 234 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.

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.