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Etheridge fire, 17 December 2019 Etheridge

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2020, 15:35 UTC

The fire started on 17 December 2019 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,319 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 650th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 340 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
11,319ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
17 Dec 2019 – 3 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Dec
2019
Heat detections
642
in a single hotspot: 126 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
6.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

3 Jan 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Dec3 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

171819202122232426282930123

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
47km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 13 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    11,380 ha reached on 17 Dec
    0.3 %

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)
17 Dec 38.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Dec 37.1 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Dec 35.6 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Dec 36.6 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Dec 35.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Dec 36.3 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Dec 37.5 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Dec 38.8 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
25 Dec 38.0 °C 21 % 32 km/h 1.6 mm High 33
26 Dec 35.8 °C 32 % 40 km/h 12.5 mm Moderate 13
27 Dec 31.8 °C 35 % 37 km/h 3.5 mm Low 8
28 Dec 33.9 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Dec 35.0 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Dec 34.9 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Dec 36.0 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
1 Jan 33.7 °C 37 % 30 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 5
2 Jan 36.2 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Jan 35.1 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Jan after 33.9 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Jan after 36.3 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jan after 35.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Jan after 34.7 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Jan after 35.2 °C 29 % 50 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
9 Jan after 36.8 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Jan after 37.0 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Jan after 36.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Jan after 35.8 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Jan after 34.6 °C 30 % 31 km/h 4.0 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Dec 2019
After · 10 Jan 2020

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 · 642Every 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 17 December 2019 and 3 January 2020: 18 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 11,319 hectares (113.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (11,380 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

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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.