Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Etheridge fire, December 2020 Etheridge

Out · last detection 9 Dec 2020, 15:41 UTC

The fire started on 2 December 2020 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,260 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 373th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 52 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
17,260ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
2 Dec 2020 – 8 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Dec
2020
Heat detections
747
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Dec 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Dec8 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

23456789

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
53km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 11 Dec.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,104 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    17,300 ha reached on 26 Nov
    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)
26 Nov 38.2 °C 28 % 53 km/h 3.0 mm High 24
27 Nov 36.7 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Nov 38.0 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Nov 38.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Nov 39.1 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Dec 41.0 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Dec 40.7 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Dec 40.4 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Dec 39.7 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Dec 39.3 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Dec 40.7 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Dec 41.1 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Dec 40.1 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 46
9 Dec after 39.4 °C 25 % 44 km/h 1.3 mm Very high 44
10 Dec after 38.2 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 39
11 Dec after 36.6 °C 29 % 30 km/h 1.9 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Nov 2020
After · 15 Dec 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 · 747Every 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 2 December 2020 and 8 December 2020: 7 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 17,260 hectares (172.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (17,300 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.