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Etheridge fire, 24 October 2021 Etheridge

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2021, 04:19 UTC

The fire started on 24 October 2021 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,153 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1349th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 341 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
6,153ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
24 Oct 2021 – 30 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
24 Oct
2021
Heat detections
208
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

31 Oct 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Oct30 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

24252627283031

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
51km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 8 Nov.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,421 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    6,214 ha reached on 24 Oct
    0.2 %

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)
24 Oct 37.2 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Oct 34.5 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Oct 37.8 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Oct 35.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Oct 36.0 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
29 Oct 31.3 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Oct 34.7 °C 31 % 31 km/h 2.0 mm High 28
31 Oct after 37.3 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
1 Nov after 37.1 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Nov after 35.3 °C 31 % 51 km/h 8.7 mm Moderate 18
3 Nov after 32.2 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Nov after 34.1 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Nov after 34.7 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Nov after 35.4 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Nov after 35.1 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Nov after 35.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Oct 2021
After · 6 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 · 208Every 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 24 October 2021 and 30 October 2021: 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 6,153 hectares (61.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (6,214 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.