How long did the Burke fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 October 2022 and 5 November 2022: 14 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 13,856 hectares (138.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Burke (13,857 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-10-23 → 2022-11-05

Burke fire, 23 October 2022 Burke

Out · last detection 6 Nov 2022, 03:23 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2022 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,856 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 520th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 123 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area: 13,856ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 23 Oct 2022 – 5 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Oct; 2022
Heat detections: 440; in a single hotspot: 216 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Energy released: 5.5GW; sum of detected power

Play back 6 Nov 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct5 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

232425262728293031123456

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

57km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 9 Nov.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,823 ha in 2016, 836 ha in 2017, 3,816 ha in 2018, 131 ha in 2019, 1,343 ha in 2020, 131 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,849 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Burke where it started

13,857 ha reached on 23 Oct

0.4 %

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)
23 Oct	37.0 °C	29 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
24 Oct	35.8 °C	40 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
25 Oct	35.6 °C	37 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Oct	35.8 °C	38 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Oct	36.6 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Oct	39.0 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
29 Oct	38.6 °C	23 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
30 Oct	38.3 °C	30 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
31 Oct	37.1 °C	39 %	53 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 50
1 Nov	36.8 °C	43 %	40 km/h	3.0 mm	Moderate 18
2 Nov	35.1 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 55
3 Nov	34.1 °C	12 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
4 Nov	34.9 °C	12 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
5 Nov	35.7 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
6 Nov after	34.5 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 47
7 Nov after	34.9 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.8 mm	High 29
8 Nov after	35.1 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.7 mm	High 29
9 Nov after	34.6 °C	45 %	46 km/h	1.3 mm	High 25

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Oct 2022

After · 12 Nov 2022

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 7 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10107 µg/m³

Optical depth0.62

WHO 15

212223242526272829303112345678

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 · 440Every 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 Burke fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 October 2022 and 5 November 2022: 14 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 13,856 hectares (138.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Burke (13,857 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned