Burned area
satellite only31,541ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Charters Towers fire, 31 October 2026 Charters Towers, Etheridge
Dying down · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 16:02 UTC
The fire started on 31 October 2026 in Charters Towers, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 31,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.
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Fire page data · version 2026-11-14matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only15days
From 31 Oct 2026 to today: still being detected.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 14 Nov 2026, 16:02 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only31 Oct 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only719
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 144 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,486MW
Total radiative power on 8 November 2026; hotspots that day: 140.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 8 Nov 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model2.3FWI · very low
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 0.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026, local noon
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model34.9°C · 17% RH
High of 34.9 °C and minimum humidity of 17% on 8 November 2026; gusts of 36 km/h on 31 October 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 31 Oct 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
- Model
- ECMWF IFS 0,25° · Open-Meteo.com · provisional
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 9 November 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logArea: 20,970 → 30,067 ha.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the forecast (provisional until ERA5 arrives)
-
logArea: 19,987 → 20,970 ha.
-
logArea: 9,605 → 19,987 ha.
-
logPage published (9,605 ha).
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/charters-towers-2026-10-3?v=2026-11-14A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire charters-towers-2026-10-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-31 | 0 | 0 | 32.3 | 19.5 | 30 | 15 | 35.6 | 5.3 | 2.3 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2026-11-01 | 1 | 4 | 31.8 | 19.6 | 32 | 11.2 | 23.8 | 0.1 | 6.6 | bajo | 1 |
| 2026-11-02 | 0 | 0 | 32.5 | 20.4 | 35 | 15.3 | 28.8 | 0.6 | 12.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2026-11-03 | 2 | 11 | 33.2 | 19.8 | 42 | 13.3 | 33.1 | 10.1 | 10 | bajo | 1 |
| 2026-11-04 | 0 | 0 | 32.8 | 19.7 | 39 | 7.9 | 18.4 | 0.7 | 0.9 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2026-11-05 | 0 | 0 | 32.3 | 21 | 41 | 9.3 | 19.4 | 1.7 | 8.6 | bajo | 1 |
| 2026-11-06 | 2 | 3 | 33.6 | 21.4 | 22 | 11.2 | 25.6 | 0 | 16.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2026-11-07 | 5 | 22 | 32.5 | 22 | 25 | 13.3 | 29.2 | 0.1 | 24 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-08 | 140 | 1,486 | 34.9 | 20.8 | 17 | 17.8 | 28.4 | 0 | 17.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2026-11-09 | 158 | 991 | 34.3 | 19.2 | 21 | 11.3 | 26.6 | 0 | 20.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2026-11-10 | 30 | 534 | 32.8 | 20.3 | 30 | 10.4 | 30.6 | 0.3 | 21 | moderado | 1 |
| 2026-11-11 | 112 | 608 | 31.5 | 19.6 | 34 | 14.8 | 34.2 | 0.5 | 26.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-12 | 120 | 878 | 32.4 | 19.1 | 28 | 13.8 | 31.7 | 0 | 24.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-13 | 96 | 442 | 33.8 | 17.9 | 24 | 11.7 | 32 | 0 | 29.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-11-14 | 53 | 235 | 32.9 | 18.3 | 26 | 10.8 | 30.6 | 0 | 24.8 | alto | 1 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ECMWF IFS · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
Is it still active?
No detections since 14 Nov 2026, 16:02 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 31,541ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 31 Oct 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 31 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 719
- in a single hotspot: 144 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 474MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
31 Oct14 Nov
14 Nov 2026
How it evolved, day by day
31 Oct
3 Nov
8 Nov
12 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
35°high
36km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,533 ha in 2017, 1,484 ha in 2019, 3,753 ha in 2020, 788 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,079 ha that had burned before.
- 5,610 ha Charters Towers fire, December 2017 37,477 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,753 ha Charters Towers fire, November 2020 17,268 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,484 ha Charters Towers fire, December 2019 12,189 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 started27,652 ha reached on 31 Oct0.4 %
-
3,949 ha reached on 9 Nov0.1 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Oct | 32.3 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 5.3 mm | Very low 2 |
| 1 Nov | 31.8 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 7 |
| 2 Nov | 32.5 °C | 35 % | 29 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 3 Nov | 33.2 °C | 42 % | 33 km/h | 10.1 mm | Low 10 |
| 4 Nov | 32.8 °C | 39 % | 18 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very low 1 |
| 5 Nov | 32.3 °C | 41 % | 19 km/h | 1.7 mm | Low 9 |
| 6 Nov | 33.6 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 7 Nov | 32.5 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 8 Nov | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 9 Nov | 34.3 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Nov | 32.8 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 11 Nov | 31.5 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Nov | 32.4 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 13 Nov | 33.8 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Nov | 32.9 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 24 Oct 2026
After · 14 Nov 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 3 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1045 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
WHO 15
29 Oct1 Nov4 Nov7 Nov
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 · 719Every 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
- 37,477 haCharters Towers14 December 2017 · 17 days · 10 km away
- 12,189 haCharters Towers27 December 2019 · 16 days · 10 km away
- 17,268 haCharters Towers14 November 2020 · 21 days · 18 km away
- 19,983 haCharters Towers 6 November 2026 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 79,727 haCharters Towers6 November 2023 · 13 days · 38 km away
- 11,995 haCharters Towers 5 November 2026 · 11 days · 39 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 31 October 2026 to 14 November 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 November 2026 to 14 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 31,541 hectares (315.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Charters Towers (27,652 ha, 0.4 %); Etheridge (3,949 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Charters Towers fire still active?
- No fire detections since 14 Nov 2026, 16:02 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 9 November 2026.
- Area: 20,970 → 30,067 ha.
- Area: 19,987 → 20,970 ha.
- Area: 9,605 → 19,987 ha.
- Page published (9,605 ha).
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 November 2026 to 14 November 2026. 719 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.