How long did the Croydon fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2025 to 25 October 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2025 to 25 October 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,915 hectares (69.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Croydon (6,963 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-10-11 → 2025-10-25

Croydon fire, 11 October 2025 Croydon

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2025, 04:41 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2025 in Croydon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,915 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1180th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 747 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Croydon · 2021 Croydon · 2025 Croydon · 2025 Croydon · 2024

Burnt area: 6,915ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 11 Oct 2025 – 25 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 11 Oct; 2025
Heat detections: 180; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 96MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct25 Oct

Play back 25 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 18 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 24 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

41°high

41km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 3 Nov.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,264 ha in 2017, 1,123 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,019 ha that had burned before.

424 ha Croydon fire, December 2021 6,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (69 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

Croydon where it started

6,963 ha reached on 11 Oct

0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
11 Oct	39.0 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Oct	36.9 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Oct	40.0 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Oct	38.6 °C	30 %	36 km/h	12.1 mm	Moderate 17
15 Oct	34.2 °C	37 %	28 km/h	3.8 mm	Low 10
16 Oct	36.2 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Oct	36.6 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Oct	39.1 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Oct	40.6 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
20 Oct	38.7 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
21 Oct	38.6 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
22 Oct	38.9 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
23 Oct	38.8 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Oct	39.7 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Oct	39.8 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
26 Oct after	39.2 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Oct after	38.2 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 38
28 Oct after	35.1 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Oct after	37.9 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Oct after	39.4 °C	16 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Oct after	39.8 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Nov after	39.1 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Nov after	38.9 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46
3 Nov after	33.6 °C	43 %	42 km/h	3.0 mm	Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Oct 2025

After · 1 Nov 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 22 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak94 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM1098 µg/m³

Optical depth0.59

WHO 15

16171819202122232425262728

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 · 180Every 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 Croydon fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2025 to 25 October 2025 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2025 to 25 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,915 hectares (69.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Croydon (6,963 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 18 October 2025 → 11 October 2025.

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 18 October 2025 to 25 October 2025. 180 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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