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Charters Towers fire, January 2018 Charters Towers

Out · last detection 14 Jan 2018, 04:05 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2018 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,470 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 642th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 316 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
11,470ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
4 Jan 2018 – 13 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Jan
2018
Heat detections
611
in a single hotspot: 346 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
680MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

14 Jan 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan13 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jan 2018 · 4 MW · 4 7 Jan 2018 · 738 MW · 59 8 Jan 2018 · 240 MW · 21 9 Jan 2018 · 153 MW · 52 10 Jan 2018 · 1,300 MW · 75 11 Jan 2018 · 1,978 MW · 213 12 Jan 2018 · 913 MW · 104 13 Jan 2018 · 782 MW · 81 14 Jan 2018 · 13 MW · 1
4 Jan 8 Jan 10 Jan 11 Jan 12 Jan 14 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

38°high
46km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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
    11,545 ha reached on 4 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)
4 Jan 37.3 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.8 mm High 36
5 Jan 31.1 °C 48 % 36 km/h 5.0 mm Low 6
6 Jan 30.9 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Jan 32.5 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Jan 31.4 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Jan 32.8 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jan 33.7 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Jan 34.9 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jan 35.3 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Jan 37.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jan after 38.2 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Jan after 36.8 °C 24 % 41 km/h 1.3 mm High 27
16 Jan after 31.9 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
17 Jan after 31.1 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jan after 32.7 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jan after 32.1 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Jan after 32.4 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jan after 30.9 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jan after 31.4 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jan after 31.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Jan after 30.5 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jan after 33.5 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Dec 2017
After · 20 Jan 2018

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 · 611Every 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 4 January 2018 and 13 January 2018: 10 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 11,470 hectares (114.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Charters Towers (11,545 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

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.

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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.

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.