West Daly fire, July 2022 West Daly
The fire started on 23 July 2022 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,981 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2790th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 431 in Australia in 2022, of 566.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.3 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
- 5,981ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 23 Jul 2022 – 1 Aug 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 23 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 10 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 28MW
- 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 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,228 ha in 2016, 4,259 ha in 2017, 5,485 ha in 2018, 5,195 ha in 2019, 3,553 ha in 2020, 5,254 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,988 ha that had burned before.
- 3,619 ha West Daly fire, May 2018 13,458 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,237 ha West Daly fire, May 2019 8,395 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,557 ha West Daly fire, June 2016 14,630 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,189 ha West Daly fire, July 2017 5,639 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,035 ha West Daly fire, June 2021 8,708 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 39 ha West Daly fire, August 2019 5,732 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5 ha West Daly fire, November 2016 6,452 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 started6,018 ha reached on 25 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Jul | 33.0 °C | 13 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Jul | 33.4 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Jul | 32.2 °C | 20 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 28 Jul | 31.4 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 29 Jul | 32.4 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Jul | 32.4 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 31 Jul | 33.9 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 1 Aug | 32.2 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 2 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.0 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 5 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 25 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Aug after | 34.9 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Aug after | 34.0 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Aug after | 35.2 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Aug after | 33.3 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
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 · 9Every 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 23 July 2022 to 1 August 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2022 to 1 August 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,981 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered West Daly (6,018 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 25 July 2022 → 23 July 2022.
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 25 July 2022 to 1 August 2022. 9 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.