Charters Towers fire, 28 October 2024 Flinders (Qld), Charters Towers
The fire started on 28 October 2024 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 151,999 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
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.
It is the 13th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1749 with a page). Number 3 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 151,999ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 18days
- 28 Oct 2024 – 14 Nov 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 28 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 3,776
- in a single hotspot: 265 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.4GW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 20 Nov.
This area had burned before
19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15,605 ha in 2018, 1,147 ha in 2019, 2,175 ha in 2020, 2,117 ha in 2021, 450 ha in 2022, 9,300 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 28,459 ha that had burned before.
- 10,280 ha Charters Towers fire, January 2018 11,470 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,410 ha Charters Towers fire, April 2023 6,105 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,858 ha Flinders (Qld) fire, November 2023 52,610 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 167 ha Charters Towers fire, December 2021 7,776 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 86 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
-
84,863 ha reached on 31 Oct2.0 %
-
Charters Towers where it started67,810 ha reached on 28 Oct1.0 %
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 2.1 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Oct | 32.9 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 29 Oct | 32.1 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 30 Oct | 32.0 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 31 Oct | 35.0 °C | 14 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 1 Nov | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 45 km/h | 0.3 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 2 Nov | 35.1 °C | 17 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 3 Nov | 33.1 °C | 23 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 4 Nov | 34.6 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Nov | 35.6 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 6 Nov | 36.3 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 7 Nov | 37.2 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 8 Nov | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Nov | 39.6 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 10 Nov | 36.8 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 11 Nov | 36.3 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 12 Nov | 37.4 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Nov | 38.6 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Nov | 37.6 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 3.3 mm | High 35 |
| 15 Nov after | 35.9 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Nov after | 33.8 °C | 37 % | 47 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 38 |
| 17 Nov after | 34.3 °C | 29 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 18 Nov after | 33.8 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 19 Nov after | 32.6 °C | 26 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 20 Nov after | 27.7 °C | 42 % | 34 km/h | 2.7 mm | Low 10 |
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 8 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 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 · 3,776Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,470 haCharters TowersJanuary 2018 · 13 days · 11 km away
- 8,424 haCharters Towers15 November 2020 · 10 days · 31 km away
- 52,610 haFlinders (Qld)November 2023 · 16 days · 35 km away
- 10,450 haCharters TowersNovember 2018 · 8 days · 36 km away
- 9,729 haCharters Towers21 November 2025 · 7 days · 38 km away
- 10,108 haCharters Towers16 November 2023 · 4 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Charters Towers fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 October 2024 and 14 November 2024: 18 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 151,999 hectares (1,520.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Flinders (Qld) (84,863 ha, 2.0 %); Charters Towers (67,810 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,776 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.