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Etheridge fire, 30 October 2021 Etheridge

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2021, 04:45 UTC

The fire started on 30 October 2021 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,842 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1446th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 367 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
5,842ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
30 Oct 2021 – 3 Nov 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
30 Oct
2021
Heat detections
219
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Nov 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Oct3 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

30311234

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
51km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 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

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 171 ha in 2017, 121 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    5,866 ha reached on 30 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)
30 Oct 36.7 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Oct 36.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Nov 35.8 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
2 Nov 33.5 °C 39 % 51 km/h 0.9 mm High 35
3 Nov 33.5 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Nov after 33.4 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Nov after 35.2 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Nov after 35.9 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Nov after 34.3 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Nov after 35.1 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Nov after 31.9 °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 · 23 Oct 2021
After · 10 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 · 219Every 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 30 October 2021 and 3 November 2021: 5 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 5,842 hectares (58.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (5,866 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.