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Etheridge fire, 16 December 2019 Etheridge

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2019, 15:22 UTC

The fire started on 16 December 2019 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,998 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 457th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 228 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
14,998ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
16 Dec 2019 – 23 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Dec
2019
Heat detections
631
in a single hotspot: 228 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
6.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Dec23 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

161718192021222324

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
46km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.1 mm on 1 Jan.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,435 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    15,018 ha reached on 16 Dec
    0.4 %

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)
16 Dec 42.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
17 Dec 41.7 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Dec 40.4 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
19 Dec 41.0 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Dec 40.5 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Dec 40.3 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Dec 40.3 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
23 Dec 40.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
24 Dec after 41.7 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Dec after 41.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 1.6 mm Very high 49
26 Dec after 39.8 °C 30 % 46 km/h 8.2 mm High 28
27 Dec after 36.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm High 31
28 Dec after 38.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Dec after 39.0 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Dec after 38.8 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Dec after 38.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
1 Jan after 36.1 °C 43 % 29 km/h 18.1 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Dec 2019
After · 30 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 · 631Every 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 16 December 2019 and 23 December 2019: 8 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 14,998 hectares (150.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (15,018 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.