How long did the Central Highlands (Qld) fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2017 to 25 August 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2017 to 22 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,778 hectares (157.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Highlands (Qld) (14,287 ha, 0.2 %); Barcaldine (1,510 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

AU · Australia · 2017-08-09 → 2017-08-25

Central Highlands (Qld) fire, August 2017 Central Highlands (Qld), Barcaldine

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2017, 03:27 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2017 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,778 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 424th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 172 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Highlands (Qld) · 2025 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2023 Barcaldine · 2024 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2024

Burnt area: 15,778ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 9 Aug 2017 – 25 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 9 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 771; in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 268MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug25 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Aug 12 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 21 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

45km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,558 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (158 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

Central Highlands (Qld) where it started

14,287 ha reached on 9 Aug

0.2 %
Barcaldine

1,510 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.0 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
9 Aug	21.1 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Aug	23.2 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Aug	25.0 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Aug	26.1 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Aug	26.3 °C	16 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Aug	27.2 °C	16 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Aug	28.5 °C	17 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Aug	28.3 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Aug	29.8 °C	17 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Aug	27.9 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Aug	20.6 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Aug	17.0 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
21 Aug	22.0 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Aug	26.1 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
23 Aug	26.1 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Aug	25.5 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
25 Aug	20.6 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
26 Aug after	21.2 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Aug after	23.0 °C	15 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Aug after	22.8 °C	12 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Aug after	23.5 °C	17 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Aug after	23.8 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
31 Aug after	24.1 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Sept after	25.2 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Sept after	26.3 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Sept after	26.3 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Sept after	28.2 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Aug 2017

After · 1 Sept 2017

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 · 771Every 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 Central Highlands (Qld) fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2017 to 25 August 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 August 2017 to 22 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,778 hectares (157.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Highlands (Qld) (14,287 ha, 0.2 %); Barcaldine (1,510 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 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.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 22 August 2017 → 25 August 2017.

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 do you think is wrong?

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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 9 August 2017 to 22 August 2017. 771 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 2015, 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