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Aurukun fire, July 2022 Aurukun

Out · last measured on 9 Aug 2022

The fire started on 31 July 2022 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,704 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1219th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 364 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
6,704ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
31 Jul 2022 – 9 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Jul
2022
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul9 Aug

The weather it burned in

34°high
50km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,115 ha in 2016, 2,221 ha in 2018, 5,345 ha in 2019, 141 ha in 2020, 173 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,536 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Aurukun where it started
    6,739 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.9 %

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)
31 Jul 30.8 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Aug 28.9 °C 58 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Aug 30.7 °C 53 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Aug 29.7 °C 55 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug 32.6 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Aug 33.5 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Aug 34.5 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Aug 33.5 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Aug 33.1 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Aug 32.7 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug after 30.6 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Aug after 30.7 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Aug after 29.5 °C 46 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Aug after 32.3 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Aug after 32.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Aug after 32.3 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Aug after 32.2 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Aug after 31.2 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Aug after 30.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Aug after 30.8 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug after 31.8 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Aug after 31.8 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug after 30.2 °C 46 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Aug after 33.3 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug after 32.9 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Aug after 32.2 °C 44 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Aug after 31.6 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2022
After · 16 Aug 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 · 5Every 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 31 July 2022 and 9 August 2022: 10 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 6,704 hectares (67.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aurukun (6,739 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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.

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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.

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.