Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Yilgarn fire, January 2022 Yilgarn

Out · last detection 18 Jan 2022, 06:16 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2022 in Yilgarn, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,826 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1440th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2710 with a page). Number 288 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
7,826ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
12 Jan 2022 – 18 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Jan
2022
Heat detections
279
in a single hotspot: 810 MW
Danger at start
79
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
12.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Jan 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan18 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

12131415161718

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
55km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Yilgarn where it started
    7,800 ha reached on 12 Jan
    0.3 %

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)
12 Jan 43.1 °C 9 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
13 Jan 38.6 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
14 Jan 35.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Jan 36.9 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
16 Jan 34.2 °C 25 % 45 km/h 1.4 mm Very high 46
17 Jan 32.9 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 50
18 Jan 35.0 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Jan after 34.0 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan after 36.1 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Jan after 37.2 °C 7 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Jan after 37.3 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Jan after 37.7 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
24 Jan after 34.7 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
25 Jan after 30.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Jan after 32.0 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
27 Jan after 33.8 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 62
28 Jan after 34.1 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jan 2022
After · 25 Jan 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.

Detections table · 279Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yilgarn fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 January 2022 and 18 January 2022: 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 7,826 hectares (78.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yilgarn (7,800 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very 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.

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.

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.