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Etheridge fire, 15 December 2019 Etheridge

Out · last detection 19 Dec 2019, 04:05 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2019 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,522 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1261th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 588 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
6,522ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
15 Dec 2019 – 18 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
219
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec18 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819

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
55km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,699 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,533 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    6,568 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.2 %

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)
14 Dec 37.3 °C 20 % 55 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 58
15 Dec 37.5 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec 36.9 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Dec 37.7 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Dec 34.7 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Dec after 33.0 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec after 34.9 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Dec after 33.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Dec after 34.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Dec after 35.9 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec after 37.1 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec after 38.7 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Dec after 36.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 4.1 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2019
After · 25 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 · 219Every 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 15 December 2019 and 18 December 2019: 4 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 6,522 hectares (65.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (6,568 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 55 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
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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.