Charters Towers fire, 2 September 2024 Charters Towers
The fire started on 2 September 2024 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 197,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 7th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1745 with a page). The largest in Australia in 2024, of 638.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 197,066ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 30days
- 2 Sept 2024 – 1 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 2 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 8,077
- in a single hotspot: 369 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,311 ha in 2017, 833 ha in 2018, 26,846 ha in 2020, 18,299 ha in 2021, 130 ha in 2022, 1,718 ha in 2023.
- 19,778 ha Charters Towers fire, November 2020 60,178 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,845 ha Charters Towers fire, October 2021 26,338 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,740 ha Charters Towers fire, November 2020 10,786 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 258 ha Charters Towers fire, December 2023 20,090 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 12 ha Charters Towers fire, November 2023 10,108 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started199,181 ha reached on 2 Sept2.9 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Sept | 32.2 °C | 23 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Sept | 30.6 °C | 15 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Sept | 27.4 °C | 30 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Sept | 28.3 °C | 30 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 6 Sept | 26.7 °C | 36 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Sept | 28.2 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 8 Sept | 28.8 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 9 Sept | 29.9 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 10 Sept | 29.6 °C | 29 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Sept | 30.0 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Sept | 30.9 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Sept | 29.1 °C | 24 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Sept | 27.4 °C | 28 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 15 Sept | 27.1 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Sept | 27.3 °C | 23 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 17 Sept | 24.7 °C | 30 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 18 Sept | 26.0 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Sept | 29.7 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Sept | 32.4 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Sept | 31.6 °C | 10 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 22 Sept | 30.6 °C | 9 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Sept | 30.4 °C | 12 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Sept | 29.5 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 25 Sept | 31.2 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 26 Sept | 33.7 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Sept | 30.1 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 43 |
| 28 Sept | 31.3 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 Sept | 32.9 °C | 17 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 30 Sept | 33.8 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Oct | 33.4 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 2 Oct after | 27.5 °C | 43 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Oct after | 29.5 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Oct after | 30.0 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Oct after | 32.6 °C | 26 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 6 Oct after | 34.1 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 7 Oct after | 34.6 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 8 Oct after | 35.0 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 9 Oct after | 33.9 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 10 Oct after | 34.1 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 11 Oct after | 32.6 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 128 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 8,077Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 15,504 haCharters Towers2 November 2025 · 10 days · 9 km away
- 60,178 haCharters Towers13 November 2020 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 9,568 haFlinders (Qld)November 2025 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 25,279 haCharters Towers1 December 2025 · 14 days · 30 km away
- 6,023 haFlinders (Qld)24 December 2024 · 8 days · 36 km away
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 2 September 2024 to 1 October 2024 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2024 to 30 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 197,066 hectares (1,970.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Charters Towers (199,181 ha, 2.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, class Extreme.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 30 September 2024 → 1 October 2024.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2024 to 30 September 2024. 8,077 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.
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.