Burned area
satellite only10,842ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 26 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Central Highlands (Qld) fire, 26 December 2018 Central Highlands (Qld)
Out · last detection 7 Jan 2019, 03:52 UTC
The fire started on 26 December 2018 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,842 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 83th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 69 in Australia in 2018, of 162.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches 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 only13days
26 Dec 2018 to 7 Jan 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 7 Jan 2019, 03:52 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 only26 Dec 2018
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 26 Dec 2018
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only860
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 74 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 26 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
+− 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 only1,836MW
Total radiative power on 2 January 2019; hotspots that day: 223.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 2 Jan 2019
+− 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
model29.0FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 3.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 26 Dec 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
model36.6°C · 15% RH
High of 36.6 °C and minimum humidity of 15% on 6 January 2019; gusts of 44 km/h on 7 January 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 26 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
- 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
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 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
- 10,842 ha
- Dates
- 26 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
- Name
- Central Highlands (Qld)
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/central-highlands-qld-2018-12-2?v=2026-10-24A 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-2018-12-2.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-12-26 | 30 | 679 | 32.9 | 18 | 17 | 12.3 | 31.7 | 0 | 29 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-12-27 | 28 | 397 | 32.7 | 17.9 | 22 | 13.2 | 31.3 | 0 | 30.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-12-28 | 31 | 286 | 33 | 18.9 | 27 | 15.9 | 39.6 | 0 | 35.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-12-29 | 11 | 151 | 33.7 | 19.9 | 27 | 17.9 | 38.5 | 0 | 31.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-12-30 | 43 | 167 | 33.8 | 19.3 | 23 | 15.3 | 36.4 | 0 | 34.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2018-12-31 | 59 | 213 | 33.6 | 19 | 22 | 13.9 | 34.6 | 0 | 32.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-01 | 175 | 1,043 | 34.4 | 18.4 | 19 | 16.5 | 35.3 | 0 | 32.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-02 | 223 | 1,836 | 33.8 | 19.1 | 26 | 14.5 | 37.1 | 0 | 31.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-03 | 61 | 993 | 33.9 | 19.5 | 27 | 13.8 | 33.8 | 0.5 | 32.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-04 | 56 | 174 | 34.7 | 21.3 | 24 | 13.9 | 34.9 | 0.2 | 34.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-05 | 35 | 141 | 34.3 | 20.2 | 24 | 13.3 | 28.4 | 0 | 34.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-06 | 97 | 712 | 36.6 | 19.3 | 15 | 12.4 | 30.6 | 0 | 37.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-07 | 11 | 81 | 34.7 | 21.1 | 20 | 18.9 | 43.6 | 0 | 42.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2019-01-08 | 0 | 0 | 26.3 | 22 | 55 | 14.8 | 35.6 | 3.4 | 27.6 | alto | 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
- 10,842ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 26 Dec 2018 – 7 Jan 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 26 Dec
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 860
- in a single hotspot: 74 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 529MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
26 Dec7 Jan
7 Jan 2019
How it evolved, day by day
26 Dec
29 Dec
2 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
37°high
44km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 8 Jan.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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 started10,963 ha reached on 26 Dec0.2 %
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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Dec | 32.9 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 27 Dec | 32.7 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 28 Dec | 33.0 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Dec | 33.7 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 30 Dec | 33.8 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 31 Dec | 33.6 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Jan | 34.4 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Jan | 33.8 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Jan | 33.9 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Jan | 34.7 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 5 Jan | 34.3 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 6 Jan | 36.6 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 7 Jan | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Jan after | 26.3 °C | 55 % | 36 km/h | 3.4 mm | High 28 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 29.0, a minimum humidity of 17% and 3 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 21.
FWI at the start
29.0
Minimum humidity
17 %
Days without rain
3
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Central Highlands (Qld) fire, 26 December 2018
10,842 ha
13 days
FWI 29.0
Min. humidity 17 %
Maranoa fire, October 2021
20,116 ha
19 days
FWI 27.7
Min. humidity 14 %
36 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 12.3 mm on 25 Oct.
Maranoa fire, September 2025
48,822 ha
19 days
FWI 34.2
Min. humidity 18 %
103 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 14.4 mm on 12 Oct.
Maranoa fire, September 2023
8,188 ha
16 days
FWI 32.3
Min. humidity 20 %
49 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Maranoa fire, August 2023
7,564 ha
11 days
FWI 25.4
Min. humidity 21 %
124 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Banana fire, August 2017
16,717 ha
24 days
FWI 36.2
Min. humidity 16 %
77 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 19 days
- median duration
- 9,679 ha
- median area
- 48 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- 2.0 mm
- rain at the end (median; 15 of 21 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (10,842 ha against a median of 9,679 ha) and lasted 13 days, against 19 days.
In 6 of 21, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.
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
3.4 mmfirst rain
8 Janthe day after it ended
44km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 7 Jan, and on 8 Jan 3.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 15 of 21, with a median of 2.0 mm.
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 · 19 Dec 2018
After · 14 Jan 2019
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 · 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Central Highlands (Qld) fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 December 2018 and 7 January 2019: 13 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 10,842 hectares (108.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Highlands (Qld) (10,963 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 21. Their median duration was 19 days and their median area 9,679 ha; 48 % went past 10,000 ha. In 6 of 21, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.0 mm.
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 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 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 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.
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.