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

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 December 2018 and 7 January 2019: 16 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 32,328 hectares (323.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Central Highlands (Qld) (32,593 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 · 2018-12-23 → 2019-01-07

Central Highlands (Qld) fire, 23 December 2018 Central Highlands (Qld)

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2019, 15:06 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2018 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,328 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 174th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1748 with a page). Number 60 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Central Highlands (Qld) · 2021 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2019 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2017 Central Highlands (Qld) · 2025

Burnt area: 32,328ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 23 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Dec; 2018
Heat detections: 2,019; in a single hotspot: 531 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec7 Jan

Play back 7 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Dec 26 Dec 29 Dec 1 Jan 4 Jan 7 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

51km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 995 ha in 2016, 826 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 20% of the area of London (323 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

32,593 ha reached on 23 Dec

0.5 %

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 area0.13 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
23 Dec	31.7 °C	27 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
24 Dec	29.0 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
25 Dec	30.0 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
26 Dec	31.3 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
27 Dec	30.7 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Dec	31.5 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Dec	31.7 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
30 Dec	32.1 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
31 Dec	32.0 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
1 Jan	32.9 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Jan	31.9 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Jan	32.5 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Jan	32.6 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Jan	32.5 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Jan	34.0 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Jan	31.0 °C	30 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Jan after	30.4 °C	36 %	45 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 18
9 Jan after	26.2 °C	63 %	34 km/h	5.5 mm	Very low 2
10 Jan after	30.7 °C	40 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
11 Jan after	31.9 °C	34 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 Jan after	32.5 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
13 Jan after	33.3 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Jan after	30.7 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Jan after	33.2 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
16 Jan after	34.2 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Jan after	33.1 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Jan after	32.0 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
19 Jan after	33.3 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Jan after	34.1 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Jan after	33.2 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Jan after	33.0 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Jan after	34.3 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Dec 2018

After · 14 Jan 2019

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 · 2,019Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 December 2018 and 7 January 2019: 16 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 32,328 hectares (323.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Central Highlands (Qld) (32,593 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,019 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