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Cobar fire, January 2026 Cobar

Out · last detection 12 Jan 2026, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2026 in Cobar, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,201 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 123th largest in New South Wales since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 802 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area
5,201ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
8 Jan 2026 – 12 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Jan
2026
Heat detections
156
in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan12 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

89101112

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
53km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 100 ha in 2016, 305 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

  1. Cobar where it started
    5,229 ha reached on 8 Jan
    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)
8 Jan 39.9 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Jan 39.4 °C 12 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Jan 39.6 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Jan 30.6 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jan 34.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jan after 38.1 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Jan after 39.0 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan after 37.9 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Jan after 33.7 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Jan after 33.7 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 57
18 Jan after 33.2 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Jan after 33.5 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 56
20 Jan after 27.9 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 41
21 Jan after 33.8 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Jan after 30.6 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jan 2026
After · 19 Jan 2026

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 11 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.41
6789101112131415
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 · 156Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cobar fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 January 2026 and 12 January 2026: 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 5,201 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cobar (5,229 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

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.