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Charters Towers fire, 21 October 2018 Charters Towers, Hinchinbrook

Out · last detection 7 Nov 2018, 04:37 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2018 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,959 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 382th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 180 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Charters Towers · 2023Charters Towers · 2025Charters Towers · 2022Charters Towers · 2026

Burnt area
16,959ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
21 Oct 2018 – 6 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
21 Oct
2018
Heat detections
880
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
315MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct6 Nov
7 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 2018 · 136 MW · 29 22 Oct 2018 · 17 MW · 4 23 Oct 2018 · 13 MW · 3 24 Oct 2018 · 145 MW · 23 25 Oct 2018 · 171 MW · 34 26 Oct 2018 · 263 MW · 66 27 Oct 2018 · 1,154 MW · 148 28 Oct 2018 · 1,746 MW · 231 29 Oct 2018 · 1,090 MW · 134 30 Oct 2018 · 116 MW · 14 31 Oct 2018 · 132 MW · 45 1 Nov 2018 · 152 MW · 21 2 Nov 2018 · 8 MW · 8 3 Nov 2018 · 80 MW · 11 4 Nov 2018 · 77 MW · 12 5 Nov 2018 · 237 MW · 30 6 Nov 2018 · 100 MW · 15 7 Nov 2018 · 40 MW · 9
21 Oct 24 Oct 27 Oct 28 Oct 30 Oct 2 Nov 5 Nov

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
51km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 20 Nov.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,825 ha in 2016, 739 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (170 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. Charters Towers where it started
    13,888 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. Hinchinbrook
    3,053 ha reached on 21 Oct
    1.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.19 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of 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)
20 Oct 26.6 °C 52 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
21 Oct 29.2 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
22 Oct 29.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
23 Oct 28.1 °C 48 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Oct 29.0 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
25 Oct 28.6 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Oct 30.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Oct 32.9 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Oct 33.2 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Oct 32.3 °C 37 % 38 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 17
30 Oct 28.8 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
31 Oct 27.9 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Nov 27.1 °C 48 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 19
2 Nov 26.0 °C 55 % 51 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 16
3 Nov 25.6 °C 57 % 42 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 13
4 Nov 27.6 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
5 Nov 29.4 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Nov 29.0 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Nov after 29.6 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Nov after 30.3 °C 42 % 45 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 16
9 Nov after 24.6 °C 71 % 40 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 4
10 Nov after 25.5 °C 63 % 39 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
11 Nov after 25.5 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
12 Nov after 25.8 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
13 Nov after 26.1 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Nov after 26.4 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
15 Nov after 27.0 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
16 Nov after 27.9 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Nov after 28.7 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Nov after 27.2 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Nov after 25.9 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
20 Nov after 26.0 °C 56 % 41 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2018
After · 13 Nov 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 · 880Every 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 21 October 2018 and 6 November 2018: 17 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 16,959 hectares (169.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Charters Towers (13,888 ha, 0.2 %); Hinchinbrook (3,053 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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 · 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

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
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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.

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. 880 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.

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.