Burke fire, August 2025 Burke
The fire started on 27 August 2025 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,281 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 656th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 424 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 11,281ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 27 Aug 2025 – 2 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 27 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 339
- in a single hotspot: 102 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 2.4GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 13 Sept.
This area had burned before
75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 97 ha in 2016, 5,209 ha in 2017, 1,650 ha in 2018, 609 ha in 2019, 323 ha in 2020, 168 ha in 2021, 6,140 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,517 ha that had burned before.
- 5,173 ha Burke fire, August 2022 13,067 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,889 ha Burke fire, October 2017 6,793 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Burke fire, August 2018 20,336 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Burke where it started11,273 ha reached on 25 Aug0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Aug | 32.8 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Aug | 33.8 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 27 Aug | 30.1 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 28 Aug | 32.9 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 29 Aug | 34.9 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 30 Aug | 31.0 °C | 16 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 31 Aug | 29.2 °C | 13 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 1 Sept | 29.6 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 2 Sept | 29.6 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Sept after | 31.2 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 4 Sept after | 31.7 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Sept after | 33.4 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Sept after | 33.2 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 7 Sept after | 33.3 °C | 36 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 47 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Sept after | 33.7 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 20 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 12 Sept after | 30.3 °C | 15 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 13 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 1.2 mm | Very high 40 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 25 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 339Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Burke fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2025 and 2 September 2025: 7 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 11,281 hectares (112.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Burke (11,273 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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
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.