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Charters Towers fire, January 2016 Charters Towers

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2016, 03:36 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2016 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 381th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 77 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
17,060ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
5 Jan 2016 – 16 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Jan
2016
Heat detections
834
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Energy released
8.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Jan 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan16 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

5678910111213141516

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
41km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 20.7 mm on 25 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Charters Towers where it started
    16,991 ha reached on 5 Jan
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
5 Jan 31.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
6 Jan 33.3 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Jan 33.3 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Jan 31.6 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Jan 29.0 °C 55 % 35 km/h 8.0 mm Very low 1
10 Jan 27.7 °C 59 % 36 km/h 14.7 mm Very low 0
11 Jan 27.5 °C 50 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 1
12 Jan 28.4 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
13 Jan 28.3 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
14 Jan 26.2 °C 58 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
15 Jan 27.7 °C 52 % 33 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 2
16 Jan 27.6 °C 53 % 38 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 4
17 Jan after 27.3 °C 54 % 38 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 4
18 Jan after 26.7 °C 65 % 38 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 1
19 Jan after 26.2 °C 61 % 40 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 2
20 Jan after 28.6 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
21 Jan after 27.7 °C 52 % 38 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 4
22 Jan after 30.7 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
23 Jan after 32.7 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Jan after 31.7 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
25 Jan after 30.1 °C 58 % 30 km/h 20.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2015
After · 23 Jan 2016

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 · 834Every 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 Charters Towers fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 January 2016 and 16 January 2016: 12 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 17,060 hectares (170.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Charters Towers (16,991 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.