Burned area
satellite only15,226ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 30 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Central Highlands (Qld) fire, September 2018 Central Highlands (Qld)
Out · last detection 11 Oct 2018, 03:02 UTC
The fire started on 30 September 2018 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,226 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 51th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 41 in Australia in 2018, of 162.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-26matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only11days
30 Sept 2018 to 10 Oct 2018: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 11 Oct 2018, 03:02 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only30 Sept 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 30 Sept 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only1,111
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 141 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 30 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,850MW
Total radiative power on 3 October 2018; hotspots that day: 302.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 3 Oct 2018
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model44.1FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 34.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 30 Sept 2018, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model30.9°C · 21% RH
High of 30.9 °C and minimum humidity of 21% on 10 October 2018; gusts of 53 km/h on 30 September 2018.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 30 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 9 October 2018 → 10 October 2018.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 26 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 15,226 ha
- Dates
- 30 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
- Name
- Central Highlands (Qld)
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/central-highlands-qld-2018-09?v=2026-10-26A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire central-highlands-qld-2018-09.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-09-30 | 154 | 817 | 27.5 | 11.3 | 26 | 23.1 | 53.3 | 0 | 44.1 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-01 | 202 | 1,285 | 25.1 | 12 | 21 | 16.9 | 42.8 | 0 | 38.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-02 | 250 | 1,346 | 25.4 | 9.8 | 19 | 15.9 | 42.5 | 0 | 37.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-03 | 302 | 1,850 | 25.4 | 9.3 | 17 | 13.7 | 34.6 | 0 | 36.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-04 | 139 | 1,228 | 26.2 | 8.3 | 22 | 16.8 | 37.1 | 0 | 39.8 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-05 | 35 | 424 | 26.6 | 12.3 | 28 | 16 | 44.6 | 0 | 37.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-06 | 11 | 38 | 25.4 | 13.9 | 30 | 13.6 | 36.4 | 1.2 | 21.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-07 | 8 | 9 | 26.3 | 14.1 | 29 | 13.7 | 33.8 | 0.7 | 26 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-08 | 4 | 11 | 26.4 | 13.5 | 36 | 15 | 38.5 | 0 | 27.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-09 | 5 | 25 | 28.3 | 14.5 | 29 | 19.1 | 43.6 | 0 | 34.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-10 | 0 | 0 | 30.9 | 13.8 | 21 | 15.5 | 44.6 | 0 | 38.7 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2018-10-11 | 1 | 8 | 31.3 | 16.1 | 19 | 18.5 | 46.4 | 0 | 44.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2018-10-12 | 0 | 0 | 20.6 | 14.9 | 69 | 17.9 | 42.1 | 25.3 | 0.2 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 15,226ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 30 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 30 Sept
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 1,111
- in a single hotspot: 141 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 640MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
30 Sept10 Oct
11 Oct 2018
How it evolved, day by day
30 Sept
3 Oct
6 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
31°high
53km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity
It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.3 mm on 12 Oct.
This area had burned before
22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,183 ha in 2016, 1,209 ha in 2017.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started15,272 ha reached on 30 Sept0.2 %
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 2020Built-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)
Started with Strong wind: 20 % of the area in Australia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sept | 27.5 °C | 26 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 1 Oct | 25.1 °C | 21 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Oct | 25.4 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 3 Oct | 25.4 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Oct | 26.2 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 5 Oct | 26.6 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Oct | 25.4 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 22 |
| 7 Oct | 26.3 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Oct | 26.4 °C | 36 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 9 Oct | 28.3 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Oct | 30.9 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 11 Oct after | 31.3 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 12 Oct after | 20.6 °C | 69 % | 42 km/h | 25.3 mm | Very low 0 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 44.1, a minimum humidity of 26% and 34 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 11.
FWI at the start
44.1
Minimum humidity
26 %
Days without rain
34
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Central Highlands (Qld) fire, September 2018
15,226 ha
11 days
FWI 44.1
Min. humidity 26 %
Barcaldine fire, November 2024
8,224 ha
8 days
FWI 42.9
Min. humidity 25 %
193 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.7 mm on 19 Nov.
Banana fire, September 2025
22,370 ha
30 days
FWI 39.5
Min. humidity 21 %
193 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 27 Oct.
Banana fire, November 2016
7,600 ha
27 days
FWI 39.3
Min. humidity 26 %
207 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 7 Dec.
Murweh fire, December 2020
8,208 ha
13 days
FWI 45.1
Min. humidity 22 %
177 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.7 mm on 16 Dec.
Central Highlands (Qld) fire, February 2019
23,644 ha
35 days
FWI 37.2
Min. humidity 20 %
133 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 57.9 mm on 15 Mar.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 11. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
25.3 mmfirst rain
12 Oct2 days after it ended
53km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 10 Oct, and on 12 Oct 25.3 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 23 Sept 2018
After · 17 Oct 2018
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 1,111Every 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
- 16,759 haCentral Highlands (Qld)29 October 2025 · 16 days · 4 km away
- 7,111 haCentral Highlands (Qld)February 2025 · 18 days · 5 km away
- 11,795 haCentral Highlands (Qld)15 October 2018 · 14 days · 9 km away
- 14,889 haCentral Highlands (Qld)21 September 2024 · 22 days · 15 km away
- 13,997 haCentral Highlands (Qld)October 2019 · 16 days · 17 km away
- 23,475 haCentral Highlands (Qld)2 October 2025 · 25 days · 23 km away
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 30 September 2018 to 10 October 2018 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2018 to 9 October 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,226 hectares (152.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Highlands (Qld) (15,272 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 9 October 2018 → 10 October 2018.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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
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 30 September 2018 to 9 October 2018. 1,111 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.
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.