West Daly fire, 5 July 2020 West Daly
The fire started on 5 July 2020 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,336 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2600th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3519 with a page). Number 230 in Australia in 2020, of 320.
The power measured by the satellite is low (27.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,336ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 5 Jul 2020 – 22 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 5 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 251
- in a single hotspot: 27 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 86MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,493 ha in 2016, 1,354 ha in 2017, 3,866 ha in 2018, 3,903 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,054 ha that had burned before.
- 4,389 ha West Daly fire, June 2016 81,588 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,640 ha West Daly fire, May 2018 35,586 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,344 ha West Daly fire, May 2019 22,161 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 235 ha West Daly fire, September 2017 17,725 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha West Daly fire, August 2018 8,213 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started6,385 ha reached on 5 Jul0.4 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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 Jul | 28.2 °C | 16 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 6 Jul | 29.0 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 7 Jul | 29.2 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 8 Jul | 29.8 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Jul | 30.6 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 10 Jul | 31.7 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Jul | 32.9 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 12 Jul | 32.0 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 13 Jul | 28.5 °C | 12 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Jul | 28.4 °C | 11 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 15 Jul | 30.0 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Jul | 31.0 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Jul | 31.1 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Jul | 32.2 °C | 11 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Jul | 31.2 °C | 26 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 20 Jul | 31.5 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Jul | 30.2 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Jul | 29.5 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Jul after | 29.3 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 24 Jul after | 30.0 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 25 Jul after | 30.7 °C | 17 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 26 Jul after | 30.1 °C | 15 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 27 Jul after | 29.2 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Jul after | 29.2 °C | 11 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 29 Jul after | 29.7 °C | 8 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 30 Jul after | 29.6 °C | 8 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 31 Jul after | 31.2 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 18 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 251Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the West Daly fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 July 2020 to 22 July 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 July 2020 to 19 July 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,336 hectares (63.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered West Daly (6,385 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 19 July 2020 → 22 July 2020.
- Start date: 12 July 2020 → 5 July 2020.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 July 2020 to 19 July 2020. 251 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.