How long did the Charters Towers fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2023 to 30 September 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2023 to 30 September 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,602 hectares (66.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Charters Towers (6,575 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

AU · Australia · 2023-09-14 → 2023-09-30

Charters Towers fire, 14 September 2023 Charters Towers

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2023, 15:23 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2023 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,602 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1242th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1745 with a page). Number 922 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Charters Towers · 2016 Charters Towers · 2021 Charters Towers · 2026 Charters Towers · 2017

Burnt area: 6,602ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 14 Sept 2023 – 30 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 14 Sept; 2023
Heat detections: 225; in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 117MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept30 Sept

Play back 30 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 27 Sept 30 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

57km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 3 Oct.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,804 ha in 2016, 275 ha in 2017, 403 ha in 2018, 970 ha in 2020, 5,124 ha in 2021, 306 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,478 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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

Charters Towers where it started

6,575 ha reached on 14 Sept

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
14 Sept	24.1 °C	33 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Sept	25.0 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
16 Sept	25.0 °C	29 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Sept	24.7 °C	39 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Sept	25.3 °C	44 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Sept	26.5 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Sept	29.1 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
21 Sept	31.4 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Sept	31.0 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Sept	25.6 °C	45 %	52 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 16
24 Sept	25.0 °C	37 %	52 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 20
25 Sept	25.2 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 19
26 Sept	24.9 °C	43 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
27 Sept	25.7 °C	37 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Sept	26.9 °C	31 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Sept	24.9 °C	43 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
30 Sept	24.7 °C	48 %	50 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
1 Oct after	24.6 °C	51 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	High 24
2 Oct after	25.3 °C	49 %	40 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 17
3 Oct after	24.7 °C	56 %	37 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Sept 2023

After · 7 Oct 2023

Before After

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 29 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1020 µg/m³

Optical depth0.26

1718192021222324252627282930123

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 · 225Every 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

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Charters Towers fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2023 to 30 September 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2023 to 30 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,602 hectares (66.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Charters Towers (6,575 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 19 September 2023 → 14 September 2023.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 September 2023 to 30 September 2023. 225 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.

Where it burned