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West Daly fire, 9 August 2018 West Daly

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2018, 05:35 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2018 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,213 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1862th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 497 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
8,213ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
9 Aug 2018 – 15 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Aug
2018
Heat detections
261
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Aug 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

910111213141516

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
56km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,711 ha in 2016, 5,857 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,553 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. West Daly where it started
    8,276 ha reached on 8 Aug
    0.6 %

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)
8 Aug 32.1 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Aug 32.4 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Aug 33.7 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
11 Aug 32.3 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Aug 30.1 °C 14 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
13 Aug 28.9 °C 12 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
14 Aug 30.0 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Aug 31.8 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Aug after 33.2 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Aug after 33.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Aug after 33.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Aug after 34.4 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Aug after 31.9 °C 8 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
21 Aug after 32.5 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Aug after 33.6 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Aug after 33.8 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Aug after 32.3 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Aug after 34.3 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
26 Aug after 35.2 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Aug after 35.1 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Aug after 34.9 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Aug after 33.3 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Aug after 32.1 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Aug after 32.3 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Sept after 35.1 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Aug 2018
After · 22 Aug 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 · 261Every 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 9 August 2018 and 15 August 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 8,213 hectares (82.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Daly (8,276 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, 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

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.

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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.