Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Aurukun fire, July 2019 Aurukun

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2019, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2019 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,047 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1720th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 795 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,047ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
21 Jul 2019 – 23 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
21 Jul
2019
Heat detections
118
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
982MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Jul 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul23 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

212223

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
40km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 864 ha in 2016, 2,384 ha in 2017, 787 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,513 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Aurukun where it started
    5,070 ha reached on 21 Jul
    0.7 %

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)
21 Jul 30.0 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul 30.1 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Jul 31.3 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul after 30.5 °C 43 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul after 29.5 °C 42 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul after 29.3 °C 37 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Jul after 30.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jul after 29.7 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jul after 30.5 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Jul after 31.5 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Jul after 31.2 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 30.5 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Aug after 30.3 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jul 2019
After · 30 Jul 2019

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 · 118Every 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 Aurukun fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2019 and 23 July 2019: 3 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 5,047 hectares (50.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aurukun (5,070 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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

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.