How long did the Aurukun fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 June 2023 and 12 June 2023: 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 5,851 hectares (58.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Aurukun (5,895 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

AU · Australia · 2023-06-10 → 2023-06-12

Aurukun fire, June 2023 Aurukun

Out · last detection 12 Jun 2023, 03:37 UTC

The fire started on 10 June 2023 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,851 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1444th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1035 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aurukun · 2018 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2021 Aurukun · 2022

Burnt area: 5,851ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 10 Jun 2023 – 12 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 10 Jun; 2023
Heat detections: 206; in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 621MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jun12 Jun

Play back 12 Jun 2023

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jun 11 Jun 12 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

37km/h · peak gust

37%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 539 ha in 2016, 714 ha in 2017, 2,644 ha in 2018, 1,075 ha in 2019, 1,741 ha in 2020, 1,389 ha in 2021, 10 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,071 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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

5,895 ha reached on 10 Jun

0.8 %

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)
10 Jun	31.8 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Jun	32.2 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Jun	32.3 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Jun after	32.8 °C	37 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Jun after	31.8 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Jun after	31.2 °C	43 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
16 Jun after	32.2 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Jun after	31.7 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Jun after	30.8 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Jun after	30.8 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Jun after	31.7 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Jun after	31.3 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Jun after	31.3 °C	46 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Jun 2023

After · 19 Jun 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1032 µg/m³

Optical depth0.42

WHO 15

89101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 206Every 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 10 June 2023 and 12 June 2023: 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 5,851 hectares (58.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Aurukun (5,895 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 206 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