How long did the Cloncurry fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2018 and 25 October 2018: 5 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 5,097 hectares (51.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cloncurry (5,098 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-10-21 → 2018-10-25

Cloncurry fire, October 2018 Cloncurry

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2018, 03:41 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2018 in Cloncurry, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,097 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1689th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 900 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cloncurry · 2017 Cloncurry · 2023 Cloncurry · 2025 Cloncurry · 2026

Burnt area: 5,097ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 21 Oct 2018 – 25 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 21 Oct; 2018
Heat detections: 129; in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start: 68; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 371MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct25 Oct

Play back 25 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct 24 Oct 25 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

40°high

45km/h · peak gust

2%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 105 ha in 2017.

103 ha Cloncurry fire, December 2017 5,524 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Cloncurry where it started

5,098 ha reached on 21 Oct

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)
21 Oct	37.2 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
22 Oct	38.8 °C	2 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
23 Oct	39.8 °C	3 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
24 Oct	39.5 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
25 Oct	38.9 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
26 Oct after	41.1 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
27 Oct after	41.5 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
28 Oct after	40.8 °C	9 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
29 Oct after	41.5 °C	8 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
30 Oct after	42.2 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
31 Oct after	40.4 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
1 Nov after	39.1 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 67
2 Nov after	38.3 °C	31 %	49 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 57
3 Nov after	38.2 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
4 Nov after	39.0 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Oct 2018

After · 1 Nov 2018

Before After

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 · 129Every 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

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cloncurry fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2018 and 25 October 2018: 5 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 5,097 hectares (51.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cloncurry (5,098 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 129 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.

Where it burned