How long did the Banana fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 November 2025 to 14 December 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 November 2025 to 14 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,010 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Banana (5,037 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 52 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-11-19 → 2025-12-14

Banana fire, November 2025 Banana

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2025, 15:17 UTC

The fire started on 19 November 2025 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,010 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1741th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 1124 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2019 Banana · 2019 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2024 Banana · 2019

Burnt area: 5,010ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 19 Nov 2025 – 14 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 19 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 302; in a single hotspot: 163 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 110MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Nov14 Dec

Play back 14 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

21 Nov 27 Nov 2 Dec 3 Dec 5 Dec 8 Dec 11 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

52km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.4 mm on 15 Dec.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,582 ha in 2019, 31 ha in 2021, 182 ha in 2023, 209 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,630 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

Banana where it started

5,037 ha reached on 21 Nov

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
20 Nov	31.6 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
21 Nov	33.1 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
22 Nov	32.6 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
23 Nov	33.7 °C	33 %	35 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 11
24 Nov	38.6 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Nov	36.1 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 21
26 Nov	33.3 °C	39 %	44 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 9
27 Nov	35.8 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
28 Nov	37.1 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Nov	35.2 °C	29 %	52 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
30 Nov	34.4 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Dec	33.2 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
2 Dec	27.4 °C	12 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 Dec	30.3 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Dec	29.9 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Dec	31.9 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Dec	33.0 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Dec	33.9 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Dec	33.1 °C	31 %	31 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 20
9 Dec	34.1 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Dec	34.2 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
11 Dec	32.4 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Dec	31.4 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
13 Dec	33.1 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Dec	33.1 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.9 mm	High 25
15 Dec after	31.4 °C	41 %	27 km/h	12.4 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Nov 2025

After · 21 Dec 2025

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 20 November 2025 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

PM1043 µg/m³

Optical depth0.35

WHO 15

181920212223242526272829301234567891011121314151617

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 · 302Every 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 Banana fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 November 2025 to 14 December 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 November 2025 to 14 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,010 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Banana (5,037 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 52 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 20 November 2025 → 19 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 November 2025 to 14 December 2025. 302 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 2025, 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