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Etheridge fire, 4 November 2020 Etheridge

Out · last detection 8 Nov 2020, 15:22 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2020 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,169 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1663th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 306 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
5,169ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
4 Nov 2020 – 9 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Nov
2020
Heat detections
202
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
59
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Nov 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov9 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

45678

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
46km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 700 ha in 2017, 480 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    5,176 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.1 %

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)
4 Nov 38.3 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
5 Nov 39.8 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Nov 39.4 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Nov 41.2 °C 6 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
8 Nov 39.4 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
9 Nov 37.8 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
10 Nov after 37.3 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Nov after 37.5 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Nov after 35.8 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
13 Nov after 37.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Nov after 38.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.8 mm High 33
15 Nov after 40.2 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Nov after 40.5 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Nov after 41.2 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
18 Nov after 39.3 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
19 Nov after 38.2 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2020
After · 16 Nov 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 · 202Every 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 4 November 2020 and 9 November 2020: 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 5,169 hectares (51.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (5,176 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very 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.