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Etheridge fire, 17 December 2019 Etheridge

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2020, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 17 December 2019 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,535 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 167th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 90 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
33,535ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
17 Dec 2019 – 6 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Dec
2019
Heat detections
1,403
in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
12.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Jan 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Dec6 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

171819202122232425262728293031123456

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
59km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.3 mm on 13 Jan.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,083 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    33,564 ha reached on 17 Dec
    0.8 %

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 40.3 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Dec 40.5 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Dec 40.0 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Dec 40.0 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Dec 39.9 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 Dec 38.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Dec 40.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Dec 41.1 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Dec 40.5 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 53
26 Dec 40.6 °C 25 % 56 km/h 9.0 mm High 26
27 Dec 35.7 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
28 Dec 38.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Dec 38.4 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Dec 37.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Dec 37.0 °C 27 % 34 km/h 1.8 mm High 29
1 Jan 37.8 °C 27 % 28 km/h 8.0 mm Moderate 12
2 Jan 39.4 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
3 Jan 37.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Jan 38.3 °C 26 % 59 km/h 1.6 mm High 34
5 Jan 38.7 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
6 Jan 39.1 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Jan after 34.6 °C 40 % 40 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 15
8 Jan after 37.1 °C 30 % 41 km/h 18.5 mm Low 5
9 Jan after 37.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Jan after 39.3 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Jan after 40.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jan after 39.2 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Jan after 36.9 °C 34 % 30 km/h 5.3 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Dec 2019
After · 13 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 · 1,403Every 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 6 January 2020: 21 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 33,535 hectares (335.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (33,564 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.