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Charters Towers fire, October 2023 Charters Towers

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2023, 04:12 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2023 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,246 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 99th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 92 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Charters Towers · 2019Charters Towers · 2022Charters Towers · 2026Charters Towers · 2023

Burnt area
50,246ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
9 Oct 2023 – 1 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Oct
2023
Heat detections
1,983
in a single hotspot: 256 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
960MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct1 Nov
1 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

9 Oct 2023 · 2 MW · 2 11 Oct 2023 · 26 MW · 9 12 Oct 2023 · 182 MW · 22 13 Oct 2023 · 289 MW · 39 14 Oct 2023 · 608 MW · 66 15 Oct 2023 · 615 MW · 128 16 Oct 2023 · 4,680 MW · 309 17 Oct 2023 · 5,223 MW · 470 18 Oct 2023 · 1,427 MW · 149 19 Oct 2023 · 402 MW · 94 20 Oct 2023 · 2,793 MW · 217 21 Oct 2023 · 1,511 MW · 179 22 Oct 2023 · 665 MW · 102 23 Oct 2023 · 767 MW · 78 24 Oct 2023 · 460 MW · 40 25 Oct 2023 · 119 MW · 25 26 Oct 2023 · 122 MW · 21 27 Oct 2023 · 177 MW · 15 28 Oct 2023 · 16 MW · 4 30 Oct 2023 · 78 MW · 13 1 Nov 2023 · 5 MW · 1
9 Oct 13 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 22 Oct 25 Oct 28 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

35°high
47km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 566 ha in 2016, 3,293 ha in 2017, 3,096 ha in 2018, 15,594 ha in 2019, 4,406 ha in 2020, 5,075 ha in 2021, 13,066 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 30,520 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (502 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
    50,196 ha reached on 9 Oct
    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 area1.0 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 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)
9 Oct 24.5 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
10 Oct 27.8 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Oct 29.6 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Oct 27.9 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Oct 32.2 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Oct 32.0 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Oct 31.2 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Oct 32.0 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Oct 34.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Oct 29.6 °C 39 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Oct 28.3 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Oct 30.4 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Oct 30.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Oct 32.7 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Oct 33.9 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Oct 34.1 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Oct 34.0 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Oct 34.7 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Oct 33.0 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Oct 28.9 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Oct 27.7 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Oct 29.3 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Oct 30.5 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Nov 35.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Nov after 31.2 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Nov after 29.9 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Nov after 30.2 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Nov after 31.8 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
6 Nov after 28.6 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Nov after 27.7 °C 48 % 43 km/h 0.7 mm High 25
8 Nov after 28.5 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
9 Nov after 30.4 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Nov after 30.2 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Nov after 31.3 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2023
After · 8 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 19 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1045 µg/m³
Optical depth0.68
910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
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 · 1,983Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 October 2023 to 1 November 2023 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 October 2023 to 28 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 50,246 hectares (502.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Charters Towers (50,196 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 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 → 1 November 2023.
  2. Start date: 11 October 2023 → 9 October 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.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 October 2023 to 28 October 2023. 1,983 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.