Burned area
satellite only6,741ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 9 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Central Highlands (Qld) fire, 9 December 2019 Central Highlands (Qld)
Out · last detection 22 Dec 2019, 04:47 UTC
The fire started on 9 December 2019 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,741 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 164th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 219 in Australia in 2019, of 288.
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 only14days
9 Dec 2019 to 22 Dec 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 22 Dec 2019, 04:47 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 only9 Dec 2019
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 9 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only368
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 36 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 9 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 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 only710MW
Total radiative power on 16 December 2019; hotspots that day: 157.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 16 Dec 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
model56.9FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 11.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 9 Dec 2019, 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
model39.8°C · 6% RH
High of 39.8 °C and minimum humidity of 6% on 16 December 2019; gusts of 49 km/h on 20 December 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 9 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 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
-
logStart date: 13 December 2019 → 9 December 2019.
-
· 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
- 6,741 ha
- Dates
- 9 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 2019
- Name
- Central Highlands (Qld)
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/central-highlands-qld-2019-12?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-2019-12.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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-09 | 18 | 59 | 34.3 | 20 | 17 | 14.7 | 38.9 | 0 | 56.9 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-10 | 14 | 36 | 35 | 17.8 | 15 | 13 | 41 | 0 | 57.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-11 | 0 | 0 | 36.4 | 18.4 | 14 | 11.3 | 35.3 | 0 | 48.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-12 | 2 | 4 | 37.5 | 19.5 | 11 | 12.4 | 37.8 | 0 | 51.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-13 | 6 | 43 | 36.7 | 18.6 | 8 | 18 | 43.6 | 0 | 54.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-14 | 24 | 118 | 36 | 20.2 | 10 | 12.4 | 31.3 | 0 | 49.6 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-15 | 32 | 132 | 36.9 | 17.2 | 9 | 7 | 25.6 | 0 | 53.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-16 | 157 | 710 | 39.8 | 19.7 | 6 | 15 | 39.6 | 0 | 55.8 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-17 | 19 | 132 | 35.8 | 22.6 | 18 | 16.3 | 42.1 | 0 | 49.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-18 | 15 | 132 | 33 | 19.5 | 21 | 18.1 | 43.9 | 0 | 54.1 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-19 | 11 | 47 | 33.1 | 17.3 | 14 | 14.5 | 38.2 | 0 | 51.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-20 | 34 | 145 | 35 | 16.6 | 14 | 17.7 | 49 | 0 | 63 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-21 | 25 | 109 | 35.6 | 17.8 | 14 | 14.8 | 43.2 | 0 | 59 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-22 | 11 | 66 | 37.8 | 17.8 | 14 | 16 | 48.6 | 0 | 57.6 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-23 | 0 | 0 | 36.1 | 20.1 | 19 | 13 | 35.3 | 0.3 | 44.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2019-12-24 | 0 | 0 | 37.9 | 19.8 | 20 | 12.2 | 38.9 | 1.9 | 45.6 | muy_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
- 6,741ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 9 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 9 Dec
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 368
- in a single hotspot: 36 MW
- Danger at start
- 57
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 133MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
9 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2019
How it evolved, day by day
9 Dec
13 Dec
16 Dec
19 Dec
22 Dec
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
40°high
49km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity
It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 24 Dec.
This area had burned before
62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,744 ha in 2017, 459 ha in 2018.
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 started6,804 ha reached on 9 Dec0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Dec | 34.3 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 10 Dec | 35.0 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 11 Dec | 36.4 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 12 Dec | 37.5 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Dec | 36.7 °C | 8 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 14 Dec | 36.0 °C | 10 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 15 Dec | 36.9 °C | 9 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 16 Dec | 39.8 °C | 6 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 17 Dec | 35.8 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 18 Dec | 33.0 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 19 Dec | 33.1 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 20 Dec | 35.0 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 21 Dec | 35.6 °C | 14 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 22 Dec | 37.8 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 23 Dec after | 36.1 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Dec after | 37.9 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 1.9 mm | Very high 46 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 56.9, a minimum humidity of 17% and 11 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.
FWI at the start
56.9
Minimum humidity
17 %
Days without rain
11
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Central Highlands (Qld) fire, 9 December 2019
6,741 ha
14 days
FWI 56.9
Min. humidity 17 %
Blackall Tambo fire, December 2018
9,889 ha
18 days
FWI 53.0
Min. humidity 14 %
142 km away, in 2018
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 16 Jan.
Blackall Tambo fire, October 2024
6,835 ha
11 days
FWI 53.9
Min. humidity 20 %
122 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 6.5 mm on 11 Nov.
Maranoa fire, December 2016
5,073 ha
4 days
FWI 64.5
Min. humidity 17 %
155 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 8.0 mm on 9 Dec.
Maranoa fire, September 2023
21,361 ha
39 days
FWI 53.4
Min. humidity 15 %
79 km away, in 2023
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Murweh fire, December 2017
6,424 ha
13 days
FWI 57.1
Min. humidity 9 %
226 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 21 Dec.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. 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
1.9 mmfirst rain
24 Dec2 days after it ended
49km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 22 Dec, and on 24 Dec 1.9 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 · 2 Dec 2019
After · 29 Dec 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 · 368Every 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
- 25,887 haMurwehAugust 2018 · 15 days · 14 km away
- 25,136 haCentral Highlands (Qld)11 November 2025 · 3 days · 15 km away
- 32,328 haCentral Highlands (Qld)23 December 2018 · 16 days · 31 km away
- 17,200 haMurwehOctober 2020 · 19 days · 32 km away
- 23,644 haCentral Highlands (Qld)8 February 2019 · 35 days · 34 km away
- 21,781 haCentral Highlands (Qld)November 2020 · 24 days · 34 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 9 December 2019 to 22 December 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 December 2019 to 22 December 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,741 hectares (67.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Highlands (Qld) (6,804 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 49 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
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 13 December 2019 → 9 December 2019.
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 13 December 2019 to 22 December 2019. 368 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.