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Burke fire, September 2023 Burke

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2023, 04:26 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2023 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,020 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1395th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1011 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Burke · 2022Burke · 2017Burke · 2025Burke · 2023

Burnt area
6,020ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
8 Sept 2023 – 23 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Sept
2023
Heat detections
208
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept23 Sept
24 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2023 · 2 MW · 1 9 Sept 2023 · 2 MW · 1 10 Sept 2023 · 13 MW · 8 11 Sept 2023 · 85 MW · 12 12 Sept 2023 · 18 MW · 13 13 Sept 2023 · 55 MW · 13 14 Sept 2023 · 231 MW · 24 15 Sept 2023 · 153 MW · 26 16 Sept 2023 · 99 MW · 13 17 Sept 2023 · 75 MW · 24 18 Sept 2023 · 96 MW · 17 20 Sept 2023 · 75 MW · 5 21 Sept 2023 · 7 MW · 2 22 Sept 2023 · 320 MW · 37 23 Sept 2023 · 108 MW · 10 24 Sept 2023 · 8 MW · 2
8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept

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
52km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 802 ha in 2017, 1,742 ha in 2018, 39 ha in 2019, 1,464 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,863 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Burke where it started
    6,035 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.2 %

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.

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 Sept 35.7 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
9 Sept 35.2 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Sept 35.3 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Sept 33.7 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
12 Sept 32.3 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
13 Sept 32.0 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Sept 31.7 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
15 Sept 31.4 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Sept 31.4 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Sept 32.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept 33.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept 32.0 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
20 Sept 36.2 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 37.8 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept 38.6 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
23 Sept 36.5 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Sept after 33.0 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 45
25 Sept after 33.4 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
26 Sept after 35.3 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept after 34.6 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept after 35.3 °C 16 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
29 Sept after 35.3 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Sept after 34.5 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Oct after 36.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct after 37.5 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Oct after 35.6 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Oct after 33.7 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Sept 2023
After · 30 Sept 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 24 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1037 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
67891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 208Every 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 8 September 2023 and 23 September 2023: 16 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 6,020 hectares (60.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (6,035 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 52 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 · 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. 208 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.

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.