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Central Highlands (Qld) fire, August 2023 Central Highlands (Qld), Woorabinda

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2023, 14:28 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2023 in Central Highlands (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 82 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 108,594 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 3th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 3 in Australia in 2023, of 157.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2025Murweh · 2024Central Highlands (Qld) · 2018Central Highlands (Qld) · 2019

Burnt area
108,594ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
82days
15 Aug 2023 – 4 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
15 Aug
2023
Heat detections
9,517
in a single hotspot: 205 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
809MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug4 Nov
4 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2023 · 162 MW · 24 16 Aug 2023 · 116 MW · 15 17 Aug 2023 · 475 MW · 34 18 Aug 2023 · 34 MW · 5 19 Aug 2023 · 45 MW · 6 20 Aug 2023 · 13 MW · 4 21 Aug 2023 · 117 MW · 16 23 Aug 2023 · 14 MW · 5 24 Aug 2023 · 548 MW · 50 25 Aug 2023 · 380 MW · 44 26 Aug 2023 · 52 MW · 12 27 Aug 2023 · 252 MW · 55 28 Aug 2023 · 92 MW · 22 29 Aug 2023 · 9 MW · 5 30 Aug 2023 · 122 MW · 35 31 Aug 2023 · 95 MW · 31 1 Sept 2023 · 439 MW · 93 2 Sept 2023 · 316 MW · 47 3 Sept 2023 · 7 MW · 6 4 Sept 2023 · 387 MW · 44 5 Sept 2023 · 209 MW · 25 6 Sept 2023 · 467 MW · 76 7 Sept 2023 · 522 MW · 35 8 Sept 2023 · 965 MW · 92 9 Sept 2023 · 2,658 MW · 436 10 Sept 2023 · 4,322 MW · 501 11 Sept 2023 · 1,387 MW · 279 12 Sept 2023 · 1,057 MW · 269 13 Sept 2023 · 1,286 MW · 240 14 Sept 2023 · 1,396 MW · 278 15 Sept 2023 · 2,580 MW · 461 16 Sept 2023 · 2,244 MW · 349 17 Sept 2023 · 1,766 MW · 278 18 Sept 2023 · 2,240 MW · 332 19 Sept 2023 · 1,249 MW · 213 20 Sept 2023 · 3,004 MW · 591 21 Sept 2023 · 3,367 MW · 465 22 Sept 2023 · 3,304 MW · 300 23 Sept 2023 · 591 MW · 120 24 Sept 2023 · 274 MW · 69 25 Sept 2023 · 538 MW · 95 26 Sept 2023 · 400 MW · 98 27 Sept 2023 · 555 MW · 112 28 Sept 2023 · 275 MW · 44 29 Sept 2023 · 199 MW · 63 30 Sept 2023 · 1,562 MW · 208 1 Oct 2023 · 1,245 MW · 232 2 Oct 2023 · 616 MW · 111 3 Oct 2023 · 96 MW · 16 4 Oct 2023 · 90 MW · 14 5 Oct 2023 · 10 MW · 9 6 Oct 2023 · 838 MW · 150 7 Oct 2023 · 335 MW · 96 8 Oct 2023 · 188 MW · 77 9 Oct 2023 · 475 MW · 110 10 Oct 2023 · 262 MW · 87 11 Oct 2023 · 585 MW · 124 12 Oct 2023 · 521 MW · 103 13 Oct 2023 · 2,486 MW · 218 14 Oct 2023 · 1,620 MW · 281 15 Oct 2023 · 1,364 MW · 154 16 Oct 2023 · 3,622 MW · 314 17 Oct 2023 · 2,050 MW · 179 18 Oct 2023 · 557 MW · 90 19 Oct 2023 · 294 MW · 94 20 Oct 2023 · 541 MW · 74 21 Oct 2023 · 239 MW · 39 22 Oct 2023 · 242 MW · 46 23 Oct 2023 · 1,689 MW · 87 24 Oct 2023 · 326 MW · 63 25 Oct 2023 · 153 MW · 25 26 Oct 2023 · 413 MW · 29 27 Oct 2023 · 339 MW · 68 28 Oct 2023 · 23 MW · 9 29 Oct 2023 · 9 MW · 3 30 Oct 2023 · 21 MW · 3 31 Oct 2023 · 9 MW · 3 1 Nov 2023 · 568 MW · 25 4 Nov 2023 · 2 MW · 2
15 Aug 10 Sept 3 Oct 19 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

37°high
47km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 6 Nov.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,210 ha in 2016, 83 ha in 2017, 7,442 ha in 2018, 1,008 ha in 2019, 702 ha in 2020, 1,233 ha in 2021, 627 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,352 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 69% of the area of London (1,086 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

  1. Central Highlands (Qld) where it started
    108,928 ha reached on 15 Aug
    1.8 %
  2. Woorabinda
    280 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.7 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.87 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.87 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
15 Aug 28.7 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
16 Aug 28.7 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Aug 29.7 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Aug 27.3 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Aug 21.0 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Aug 23.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Aug 25.3 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
22 Aug 25.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Aug 26.9 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Aug 27.0 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Aug 25.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Aug 25.2 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Aug 25.4 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug 25.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Aug 26.2 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
30 Aug 25.8 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
31 Aug 28.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Sept 28.4 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Sept 28.7 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Sept 27.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept 28.2 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 29.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Sept 29.7 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Sept 28.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept 30.1 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
9 Sept 26.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept 24.2 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Sept 24.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Sept 24.5 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Sept 25.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept 26.2 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept 26.4 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Sept 27.2 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept 28.1 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 28.0 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept 28.1 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Sept 30.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Sept 33.2 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Sept 30.7 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Sept 27.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 26.2 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Sept 26.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept 28.4 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept 30.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Sept 31.9 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Sept 30.4 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Sept 30.2 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 29.6 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 29.5 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Oct 27.3 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Oct 31.3 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct 27.5 °C 38 % 32 km/h 3.1 mm Low 9
6 Oct 29.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Oct 28.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Oct 26.7 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Oct 27.2 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Oct 28.3 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Oct 30.2 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 30.8 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Oct 32.3 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Oct 31.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Oct 32.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Oct 33.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Oct 33.6 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Oct 29.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Oct 29.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Oct 31.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Oct 33.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Oct 34.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Oct 36.4 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Oct 36.3 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Oct 36.0 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Oct 33.8 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Oct 27.3 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Oct 28.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Oct 28.8 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Oct 31.5 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Oct 35.2 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Nov 36.6 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Nov 32.8 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Nov 29.9 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm High 38
4 Nov 30.2 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
5 Nov after 30.3 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
6 Nov after 26.4 °C 53 % 37 km/h 4.4 mm Low 7

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 22.6, a minimum humidity of 19% and 21 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 14.

FWI at the start 22.6
Minimum humidity 19 %
Days without rain 21
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Banana fire, September 2025
25,259 ha 19 days FWI 27.1 Min. humidity 17 % 119 km away, in 2025

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.3 mm on 12 Oct.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 14. 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

4.4 mmfirst rain
6 Nov2 days after it ended
47km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 4 Nov, and on 6 Nov 4.4 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.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2023
After · 11 Nov 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 18 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1049 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
18 Aug2 Sept17 Sept2 Oct17 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 9,517Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 15 August 2023 to 4 November 2023 (82 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2023 to 28 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 108,594 hectares (1,085.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Highlands (Qld) (108,928 ha, 1.8 %); Woorabinda (280 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 October 2023 → 4 November 2023.
  2. Start date: 20 August 2023 → 15 August 2023.

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
What do you think is wrong?

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 August 2023 to 28 October 2023. 9,517 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 2025, 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.