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Etheridge fire, 8 December 2019 Etheridge

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2019, 15:10 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2019 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,837 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 225th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 122 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
25,837ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
8 Dec 2019 – 13 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Dec
2019
Heat detections
1,143
in a single hotspot: 233 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
10.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec13 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

891011121314

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
53km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,176 ha in 2016, 4 ha in 2017, 1,469 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    25,943 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.7 %

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 Dec 36.9 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Dec 34.1 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
10 Dec 32.3 °C 44 % 53 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 44
11 Dec 34.5 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
12 Dec 36.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Dec 37.5 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Dec after 36.8 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 58
15 Dec after 36.7 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 50
16 Dec after 36.3 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Dec after 36.8 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 53
18 Dec after 35.1 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Dec after 34.2 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Dec after 35.5 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Dec after 34.1 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Dec after 35.1 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Dec after 36.3 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Dec after 37.4 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2019
After · 20 Dec 2019

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 · 1,143Every 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 Etheridge fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2019 and 13 December 2019: 6 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 25,837 hectares (258.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (25,943 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.