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Etheridge fire, 23 October 2021 Etheridge

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2021, 15:24 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2021 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,739 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 318th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 69 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
19,739ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
23 Oct 2021 – 26 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Oct
2021
Heat detections
994
in a single hotspot: 119 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
11.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Oct 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct26 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

23242526

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
51km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 9 Nov.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,199 ha in 2016, 109 ha in 2017, 1,981 ha in 2018, 11,583 ha in 2019, 2,292 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,358 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    19,819 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.5 %

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)
23 Oct 34.1 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Oct 35.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Oct 34.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Oct 35.4 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Oct after 33.5 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Oct after 35.3 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Oct after 33.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Oct after 35.5 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Oct after 35.7 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Nov after 34.5 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
2 Nov after 32.3 °C 38 % 51 km/h 0.9 mm High 35
3 Nov after 32.3 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov after 32.1 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Nov after 34.0 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Nov after 34.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Nov after 33.0 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Nov after 33.8 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Nov after 30.6 °C 45 % 30 km/h 4.0 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2021
After · 2 Nov 2021

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 · 994Every 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 23 October 2021 and 26 October 2021: 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 19,739 hectares (197.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (19,819 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.