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Cloncurry fire, September 2023 Cloncurry

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2023, 15:43 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2023 in Cloncurry, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 35,750 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 154th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 140 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cloncurry · 2026Cloncurry · 2025Cloncurry · 2020Cloncurry · 2020

Burnt area
35,750ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
30 Sept 2023 – 15 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
30 Sept
2023
Heat detections
1,227
in a single hotspot: 191 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
797MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept15 Oct
15 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2023 · 1 MW · 2 1 Oct 2023 · 6 MW · 5 2 Oct 2023 · 75 MW · 15 3 Oct 2023 · 631 MW · 88 4 Oct 2023 · 1,213 MW · 144 5 Oct 2023 · 3,364 MW · 247 6 Oct 2023 · 2,709 MW · 227 7 Oct 2023 · 1,798 MW · 338 8 Oct 2023 · 1,414 MW · 82 10 Oct 2023 · 18 MW · 6 11 Oct 2023 · 11 MW · 5 12 Oct 2023 · 261 MW · 34 13 Oct 2023 · 32 MW · 8 14 Oct 2023 · 408 MW · 20 15 Oct 2023 · 21 MW · 6
30 Sept 3 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 10 Oct 13 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

35°high
54km/h · peak gust
5%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: 891 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (358 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
    36,140 ha reached on 30 Sept
    0.8 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
30 Sept 33.1 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
1 Oct 34.7 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
2 Oct 34.7 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
3 Oct 35.4 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
4 Oct 28.5 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
5 Oct 27.8 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Oct 30.2 °C 11 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Oct 32.8 °C 13 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
8 Oct 33.4 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 67
9 Oct 29.6 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 32.7 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Oct 34.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Oct 35.0 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
13 Oct 35.2 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
14 Oct 32.3 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
15 Oct 35.0 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Oct after 34.2 °C 9 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
17 Oct after 33.8 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
18 Oct after 35.9 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
19 Oct after 36.7 °C 8 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Oct after 38.0 °C 6 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Oct after 38.5 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
22 Oct after 36.9 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
23 Oct after 36.6 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 Oct after 39.5 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
25 Oct after 37.3 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Sept 2023
After · 22 Oct 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 9 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 147 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak147 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10215 µg/m³
Optical depth2.86
29301234567891011
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 · 1,227Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 September 2023 to 15 October 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2023 to 8 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 35,750 hectares (357.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cloncurry (36,140 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 73, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 October 2023 → 15 October 2023.
  2. Start date: 1 October 2023 → 30 September 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 October 2023 to 8 October 2023. 1,227 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.