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Etheridge fire, 3 October 2025 Etheridge, Croydon

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2025, 03:19 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2025 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,203 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 239th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 152 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
25,203ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
3 Oct 2025 – 7 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
3 Oct
2025
Heat detections
618
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
66
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct7 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

345678

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
39km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.6 mm on 14 Oct.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,288 ha in 2016, 3,987 ha in 2017, 2,286 ha in 2018, 4,315 ha in 2019, 874 ha in 2020, 1,696 ha in 2021, 3,950 ha in 2022, 7,332 ha in 2023, 3,007 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,010 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    20,240 ha reached on 3 Oct
    0.5 %
  2. Croydon
    5,073 ha reached on 3 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)
3 Oct 37.9 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
4 Oct 38.2 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
5 Oct 36.7 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Oct 34.7 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Oct 35.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
8 Oct after 38.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Oct after 38.2 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Oct after 37.9 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
11 Oct after 38.1 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Oct after 36.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Oct after 39.9 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Oct after 38.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 11.6 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2025
After · 14 Oct 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 8 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak57 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1058 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
12345678910
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 618Every 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 3 October 2025 and 7 October 2025: 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 25,203 hectares (252.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etheridge (20,240 ha, 0.5 %); Croydon (5,073 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.