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West Daly fire, 14 August 2022 West Daly

Out · last detection 5 Sept 2022, 04:27 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2022 in West Daly, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,565 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 730th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 74 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Daly · 2019West Daly · 2019West Daly · 2016West Daly · 2022

Burnt area
17,565ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
14 Aug 2022 – 5 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Aug
2022
Heat detections
566
in a single hotspot: 212 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
366MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug5 Sept
5 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2022 · 5 MW · 1 15 Aug 2022 · 12 MW · 2 16 Aug 2022 · 423 MW · 52 17 Aug 2022 · 349 MW · 18 18 Aug 2022 · 1,231 MW · 37 19 Aug 2022 · 214 MW · 24 20 Aug 2022 · 532 MW · 27 21 Aug 2022 · 487 MW · 49 22 Aug 2022 · 240 MW · 18 23 Aug 2022 · 120 MW · 15 24 Aug 2022 · 701 MW · 96 25 Aug 2022 · 1,104 MW · 95 26 Aug 2022 · 389 MW · 53 27 Aug 2022 · 1,115 MW · 50 28 Aug 2022 · 222 MW · 16 29 Aug 2022 · 65 MW · 4 30 Aug 2022 · 20 MW · 3 2 Sept 2022 · 29 MW · 2 4 Sept 2022 · 22 MW · 3 5 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 1
14 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 20 Aug 23 Aug 26 Aug 29 Aug 4 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
50km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,359 ha in 2016, 12,734 ha in 2017, 6,716 ha in 2018, 16,104 ha in 2019, 6,439 ha in 2020, 8,134 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,455 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (176 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
    17,655 ha reached on 14 Aug
    1.2 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
14 Aug 31.4 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Aug 32.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Aug 31.7 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Aug 31.4 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Aug 32.0 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug 30.3 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug 31.5 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Aug 32.2 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Aug 32.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Aug 32.3 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Aug 29.6 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Aug 29.1 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Aug 30.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Aug 31.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug 29.8 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Aug 30.5 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 30.8 °C 52 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug 30.4 °C 57 % 30 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
1 Sept 30.5 °C 58 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
2 Sept 32.2 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Sept 32.0 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Sept 32.0 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Sept 31.6 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept after 29.8 °C 56 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept after 29.5 °C 57 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Sept after 31.0 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Sept after 31.8 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Sept after 31.1 °C 48 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Sept after 30.5 °C 53 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Sept after 32.0 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Sept after 30.8 °C 61 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
14 Sept after 32.7 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept after 31.5 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2022
After · 12 Sept 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 203 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 92: 6.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak203 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10291 µg/m³
Optical depth1.02
121314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 566Every 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 14 August 2022 and 5 September 2022: 23 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 17,565 hectares (175.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered West Daly (17,655 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 566 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.

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.