How long did the York fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 May 2018 and 23 May 2018: 16 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 7,887 hectares (78.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: York (7,410 ha, 3.5 %); Northam (355 ha, 0.2 %); Mundaring (150 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-05-08 → 2018-05-23

York fire, May 2018 York, Northam, Mundaring

Out · last detection 23 May 2018, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 8 May 2018 in York, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,887 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 1424th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 520 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: York · 2026 York · 2018 Beverley · 2020 Beverley · 2016

Burnt area: 7,887ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 8 May 2018 – 23 May 2018
Municipalities hit: 3; local government areas
Started on: 8 May; 2018
Heat detections: 721; in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 539MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

8 May 11 May 14 May 17 May 20 May 23 May

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

70km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.5 mm on 24 May.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (79 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

York where it started

7,410 ha reached on 8 May

3.5 %
Northam

355 ha reached on 15 May

0.2 %
Mundaring

150 ha

0.2 %

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)
1 May	19.2 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
2 May	17.1 °C	44 %	52 km/h	0.3 mm	High 27
3 May	18.7 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
4 May	19.6 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
5 May	25.7 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 May	20.0 °C	20 %	70 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 41
7 May	19.5 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
8 May	20.6 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
9 May	21.7 °C	37 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 May	21.7 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 May	26.0 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
12 May	29.7 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 May	25.5 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 May	22.7 °C	47 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 May	24.0 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
16 May	23.0 °C	31 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 May	22.0 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 May	21.4 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
19 May	21.1 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
20 May	21.9 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 May	22.2 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 May	24.2 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 May	24.7 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 May after	25.2 °C	23 %	78 km/h	12.5 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 May 2018

After · 30 May 2018

Before After

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 · 721Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the York fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 May 2018 and 23 May 2018: 16 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 7,887 hectares (78.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: York (7,410 ha, 3.5 %); Northam (355 ha, 0.2 %); Mundaring (150 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

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. 721 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.

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.

Where it burned