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Burke fire, October 2017 Burke

Out · last detection 5 Nov 2017, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 31 October 2017 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,793 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1197th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 568 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
6,793ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
31 Oct 2017 – 5 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Oct
2017
Heat detections
206
in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
3.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

5 Nov 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Oct5 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

3112345

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
47km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 14 Nov.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Burke where it started
    6,788 ha reached on 31 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
24 Oct 37.1 °C 5 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Oct 34.0 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
26 Oct 35.3 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Oct 35.8 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Oct 37.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Oct 36.2 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Oct 35.8 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
31 Oct 39.3 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Nov 37.6 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
2 Nov 37.3 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
3 Nov 37.4 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Nov 34.6 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm High 31
5 Nov 35.9 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm High 30
6 Nov after 34.5 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
7 Nov after 36.1 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
8 Nov after 37.4 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Nov after 36.0 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 63
10 Nov after 34.4 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Nov after 33.5 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Nov after 32.0 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
13 Nov after 32.7 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm High 26
14 Nov after 33.8 °C 43 % 40 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Oct 2017
After · 12 Nov 2017

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 · 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Burke fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 October 2017 and 5 November 2017: 6 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 6,793 hectares (67.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (6,788 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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.