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Barcaldine fire, December 2019 Barcaldine, Charters Towers, Flinders (Qld)

Out · last detection 11 Dec 2019, 16:07 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2019 in Barcaldine, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,746 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 305th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 157 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
20,746ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
8 Dec 2019 – 11 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
8 Dec
2019
Heat detections
816
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

11 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec11 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

8 Dec 2019 · 150 MW · 48 9 Dec 2019 · 11,568 MW · 657 10 Dec 2019 · 1,212 MW · 98 11 Dec 2019 · 98 MW · 13
8 Dec 9 Dec 10 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
46km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Barcaldine where it started
    18,350 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.3 %
  2. Charters Towers
    1,891 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.0 %
  3. Flinders (Qld)
    452 ha reached on 9 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
8 Dec 38.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
9 Dec 36.9 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
10 Dec 37.8 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
11 Dec 39.0 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
12 Dec after 38.5 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
13 Dec after 40.6 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Dec after 40.0 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
15 Dec after 39.0 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Dec after 39.5 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Dec after 41.4 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
18 Dec after 37.5 °C 19 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
19 Dec after 35.4 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Dec after 36.2 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Dec after 36.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2019
After · 18 Dec 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 · 816Every 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 Barcaldine fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2019 and 11 December 2019: 4 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 20,746 hectares (207.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Barcaldine (18,350 ha, 0.3 %); Charters Towers (1,891 ha, 0.0 %); Flinders (Qld) (452 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
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.