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Carpentaria fire, 11 October 2016 Carpentaria, Cook

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2016, 15:22 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2016 in Carpentaria, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,954 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1413th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 340 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carpentaria · 2020Cook · 2021Cook · 2018Carpentaria · 2025

Burnt area
5,954ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
11 Oct 2016 – 12 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
11 Oct
2016
Heat detections
195
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
696MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

12 Oct 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct12 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2016 · 1,010 MW · 140 12 Oct 2016 · 381 MW · 55
11 Oct 12 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
36km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

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. Carpentaria where it started
    5,411 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Cook
    530 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.0 %

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)
11 Oct 37.7 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Oct 37.3 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Oct after 36.7 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Oct after 36.4 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Oct after 36.0 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Oct after 35.7 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Oct after 37.4 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Oct after 37.2 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Oct after 39.2 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Oct after 38.8 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Oct after 39.3 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Oct after 36.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2016
After · 19 Oct 2016

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 · 195Every 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 Carpentaria fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2016 and 12 October 2016: 2 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 5,954 hectares (59.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Carpentaria (5,411 ha, 0.1 %); Cook (530 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
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.

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. 195 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.