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Croydon fire, 7 December 2017 Croydon, McKinlay

Out · last detection 19 Dec 2017, 15:04 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2017 in Croydon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,964 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 868th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 393 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Croydon · 2024Croydon · 2024Croydon · 2016

Burnt area
8,964ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
7 Dec 2017 – 19 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
7 Dec
2017
Heat detections
341
in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
320MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec19 Dec
19 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Dec 2017 · 519 MW · 12 8 Dec 2017 · 197 MW · 18 9 Dec 2017 · 18 MW · 2 10 Dec 2017 · 172 MW · 18 11 Dec 2017 · 339 MW · 27 13 Dec 2017 · 169 MW · 42 14 Dec 2017 · 1,023 MW · 63 15 Dec 2017 · 93 MW · 11 16 Dec 2017 · 458 MW · 57 17 Dec 2017 · 443 MW · 53 18 Dec 2017 · 392 MW · 32 19 Dec 2017 · 20 MW · 3
7 Dec 9 Dec 11 Dec 14 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high
50km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 31 Dec.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 36 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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. Croydon where it started
    8,917 ha reached on 7 Dec
    0.3 %
  2. McKinlay
    137 ha reached on 16 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
1 Dec 37.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Dec 37.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 19
3 Dec 37.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Dec 36.2 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Dec 35.0 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Dec 38.4 °C 6 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Dec 40.9 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Dec 40.8 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Dec 41.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Dec 40.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec 39.9 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Dec 39.1 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Dec 39.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Dec 40.0 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Dec 39.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Dec 39.7 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Dec 40.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Dec 40.0 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Dec 40.2 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Dec after 38.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Dec after 37.7 °C 29 % 32 km/h 1.0 mm High 30
22 Dec after 39.2 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.9 mm Extreme 51
23 Dec after 39.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Dec after 39.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Dec after 41.1 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Dec after 41.5 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Dec after 41.4 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Dec after 39.1 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
29 Dec after 40.1 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec after 39.6 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Dec after 40.8 °C 28 % 32 km/h 1.3 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2017
After · 26 Dec 2017

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 · 341Every 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 Croydon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 December 2017 and 19 December 2017: 13 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 8,964 hectares (89.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Croydon (8,917 ha, 0.3 %); McKinlay (137 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 341 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.