How long did the Aurukun fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 October 2018 and 6 November 2018: 11 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 15,864 hectares (158.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Aurukun (15,957 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2018-10-27 → 2018-11-06

Aurukun fire, 27 October 2018 Aurukun

Out · last detection 7 Nov 2018, 15:47 UTC

The fire started on 27 October 2018 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,864 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 418th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 199 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aurukun · 2017 Aurukun · 2017 Aurukun · 2016 Aurukun · 2026

Burnt area: 15,864ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 27 Oct 2018 – 6 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Oct; 2018
Heat detections: 588; in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 361MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Oct6 Nov

Play back 7 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Oct 29 Oct 31 Oct 2 Nov 4 Nov 6 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 21 Nov.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,779 ha in 2016, 6,398 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,842 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (159 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

Aurukun where it started

15,957 ha reached on 27 Oct

2.1 %

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)
27 Oct	36.4 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Oct	33.9 °C	42 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Oct	36.5 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
30 Oct	36.7 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Oct	37.6 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
1 Nov	37.0 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Nov	37.1 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 45
3 Nov	37.0 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Nov	37.1 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Nov	36.2 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
6 Nov	35.8 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 39
7 Nov after	36.7 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 38
8 Nov after	36.2 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.9 mm	High 34
9 Nov after	35.6 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Nov after	34.9 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
11 Nov after	34.8 °C	40 %	32 km/h	1.2 mm	High 25
12 Nov after	35.9 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
13 Nov after	35.9 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Nov after	36.4 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Nov after	36.8 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Nov after	36.5 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Nov after	35.3 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Nov after	34.4 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Nov after	35.3 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	High 37
20 Nov after	34.0 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
21 Nov after	34.7 °C	45 %	33 km/h	3.1 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Oct 2018

After · 13 Nov 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 · 588Every 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 Aurukun fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 October 2018 and 6 November 2018: 11 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 15,864 hectares (158.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Aurukun (15,957 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.

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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. 588 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.

Where it burned