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Barcaldine fire, 3 December 2023 Barcaldine, Isaac

Out · last detection 6 Dec 2023, 16:08 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2023 in Barcaldine, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,461 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1082th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 798 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Isaac · 2022Barcaldine · 2024Barcaldine · 2025Barcaldine · 2024

Burnt area
7,461ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
3 Dec 2023 – 7 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
3 Dec
2023
Heat detections
263
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
440MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec7 Dec
6 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2023 · 62 MW · 44 4 Dec 2023 · 1,077 MW · 95 5 Dec 2023 · 465 MW · 85 6 Dec 2023 · 158 MW · 39
3 Dec 4 Dec 5 Dec 6 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

34°high
44km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 641 ha in 2017, 312 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 822 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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

  1. Barcaldine where it started
    7,426 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.1 %
  2. Isaac
    44 ha
    0.0 %

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)
3 Dec 33.8 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm Low 8
4 Dec 34.1 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
5 Dec 33.2 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
6 Dec 32.5 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
7 Dec 32.4 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
8 Dec after 32.4 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
9 Dec after 32.0 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Dec after 31.7 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
11 Dec after 29.9 °C 44 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
12 Dec after 30.1 °C 53 % 53 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 13
13 Dec after 30.7 °C 50 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
14 Dec after 33.0 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Dec after 33.7 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Dec after 29.3 °C 56 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
17 Dec after 32.2 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2023
After · 14 Dec 2023

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

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
12345678910
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 · 263Every 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 3 December 2023 and 7 December 2023: 5 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 7,461 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barcaldine (7,426 ha, 0.1 %); Isaac (44 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
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

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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?

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. 263 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.