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Cloncurry fire, 13 November 2016 Cloncurry

Out · last detection 19 Nov 2016, 04:00 UTC

The fire started on 13 November 2016 in Cloncurry, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,073 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1376th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 329 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cloncurry · 2024Cloncurry · 2017Cloncurry · 2021Cloncurry · 2024

Burnt area
6,073ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
13 Nov 2016 – 19 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Nov
2016
Heat detections
233
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
265MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Nov19 Nov
19 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

13 Nov 2016 · 7 MW · 2 14 Nov 2016 · 173 MW · 57 15 Nov 2016 · 626 MW · 74 16 Nov 2016 · 400 MW · 49 17 Nov 2016 · 462 MW · 40 18 Nov 2016 · 134 MW · 6 19 Nov 2016 · 55 MW · 5
13 Nov 14 Nov 15 Nov 16 Nov 17 Nov 18 Nov 19 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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. Cloncurry where it started
    6,118 ha reached on 13 Nov
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
13 Nov 31.7 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Nov 31.5 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
15 Nov 33.2 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Nov 36.0 °C 7 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
17 Nov 36.3 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Nov 35.2 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Nov 35.4 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Nov after 36.4 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Nov after 35.8 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 Nov after 37.2 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Nov after 38.6 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
24 Nov after 39.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Nov after 39.6 °C 9 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 90
26 Nov after 37.2 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
27 Nov after 36.7 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Nov after 37.1 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Nov after 38.3 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Nov 2016
After · 26 Nov 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 233Every 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 Cloncurry fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 November 2016 and 19 November 2016: 7 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 6,073 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cloncurry (6,118 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 233 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.

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.