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Burke fire, 21 August 2022 Burke

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2022, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2022 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,067 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 555th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 132 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
13,067ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
21 Aug 2022 – 29 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
21 Aug
2022
Heat detections
462
in a single hotspot: 292 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
4.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Aug 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug29 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

21222324252627282930

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
60km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,599 ha in 2017, 3,771 ha in 2018, 608 ha in 2019, 750 ha in 2020, 13 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,732 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Burke where it started
    13,059 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.3 %

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)
21 Aug 30.3 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Aug 30.0 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Aug 33.8 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
24 Aug 26.5 °C 12 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
25 Aug 27.7 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Aug 30.0 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Aug 32.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Aug 32.8 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Aug 32.1 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
30 Aug after 32.2 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
31 Aug after 33.1 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept after 32.1 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Sept after 33.1 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Sept after 29.6 °C 21 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Sept after 29.7 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Sept after 32.5 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Sept after 34.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
7 Sept after 31.3 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Sept after 31.0 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
9 Sept after 32.1 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
10 Sept after 34.3 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Sept after 34.5 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept after 35.0 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Sept after 35.2 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Sept after 34.5 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Sept after 32.9 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 2022
After · 5 Sept 2022

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 27 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 70 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak70 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10107 µg/m³
Optical depth0.38
192021222324252627282930311
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 · 462Every 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 21 August 2022 and 29 August 2022: 9 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 13,067 hectares (130.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (13,059 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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.