How long did the Carpentaria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2020 to 9 October 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2020 to 8 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,297 hectares (253.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (14,647 ha, 0.1 %); Carpentaria (10,806 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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 · 2020-09-27 → 2020-10-09

Carpentaria fire, September 2020 Cook, Carpentaria

Out · last detection 9 Oct 2020, 03:35 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2020 in Carpentaria, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,297 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 235th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 27 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carpentaria · 2016 Cook · 2020 Cook · 2021 Cook · 2020

Burnt area: 25,297ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 27 Sept 2020 – 9 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 27 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 860; in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 416MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept9 Oct

Play back 9 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 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

39°high

50km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,151 ha in 2016, 2,455 ha in 2017, 6,272 ha in 2018, 4,444 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,502 ha that had burned before.

2,706 ha Carpentaria fire, October 2016 5,954 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (253 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

Cook

14,647 ha reached on 30 Sept

0.1 %
Carpentaria where it started

10,806 ha reached on 27 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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	Danger (FWI)
27 Sept	39.4 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
28 Sept	37.9 °C	17 %	46 km/h	Extreme 62
29 Sept	37.2 °C	18 %	46 km/h	Extreme 61
30 Sept	37.1 °C	22 %	44 km/h	Extreme 56
1 Oct	38.3 °C	16 %	50 km/h	Extreme 62
2 Oct	36.3 °C	21 %	50 km/h	Extreme 63
3 Oct	36.9 °C	19 %	50 km/h	Extreme 63
4 Oct	36.4 °C	20 %	48 km/h	Extreme 63
5 Oct	37.5 °C	18 %	43 km/h	Extreme 59
6 Oct	37.0 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 55
7 Oct	37.4 °C	20 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
8 Oct	36.9 °C	21 %	39 km/h	Extreme 57
9 Oct	37.8 °C	14 %	40 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Oct after	38.4 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
11 Oct after	37.6 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
12 Oct after	38.9 °C	19 %	43 km/h	Extreme 59
13 Oct after	39.0 °C	17 %	37 km/h	Extreme 52
14 Oct after	38.0 °C	23 %	43 km/h	Extreme 54
15 Oct after	37.6 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 60
16 Oct after	37.4 °C	16 %	45 km/h	Extreme 57
17 Oct after	36.7 °C	15 %	39 km/h	Extreme 56
18 Oct after	37.3 °C	19 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
19 Oct after	37.7 °C	24 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Sept 2020

After · 16 Oct 2020

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.

Detections table · 860Every 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 Carpentaria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2020 to 9 October 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 September 2020 to 8 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,297 hectares (253.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (14,647 ha, 0.1 %); Carpentaria (10,806 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 October 2020 → 9 October 2020.

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.

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 September 2020 to 8 October 2020. 860 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.

Where it burned