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Etheridge fire, 29 November 2025 Etheridge

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2025, 03:46 UTC

The fire started on 29 November 2025 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,390 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 436th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 288 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Etheridge · 2019Etheridge · 2017Etheridge · 2025

Burnt area
15,390ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
29 Nov 2025 – 15 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
29 Nov
2025
Heat detections
620
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
222MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Nov15 Dec
15 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

29 Nov 2025 · 7 MW · 1 2 Dec 2025 · 19 MW · 11 3 Dec 2025 · 89 MW · 18 4 Dec 2025 · 33 MW · 7 5 Dec 2025 · 97 MW · 12 6 Dec 2025 · 577 MW · 108 7 Dec 2025 · 427 MW · 86 8 Dec 2025 · 167 MW · 33 9 Dec 2025 · 399 MW · 73 10 Dec 2025 · 457 MW · 88 11 Dec 2025 · 606 MW · 96 12 Dec 2025 · 156 MW · 47 13 Dec 2025 · 262 MW · 37 14 Dec 2025 · 4 MW · 1 15 Dec 2025 · 29 MW · 2
29 Nov 4 Dec 7 Dec 10 Dec 11 Dec 13 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
52km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.8 mm on 16 Dec.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 568 ha in 2017, 11,783 ha in 2019, 135 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.7% of the area of London (154 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    15,521 ha reached on 29 Nov
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
29 Nov 33.9 °C 42 % 30 km/h 2.3 mm Low 6
30 Nov 29.2 °C 60 % 27 km/h 7.9 mm Very low 1
1 Dec 32.8 °C 39 % 23 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 2
2 Dec 33.5 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
3 Dec 32.0 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Dec 32.1 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Dec 32.8 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Dec 33.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Dec 35.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Dec 33.7 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Dec 33.0 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
10 Dec 34.3 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Dec 33.4 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Dec 33.2 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Dec 35.0 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Dec 34.1 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Dec 35.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm High 29
16 Dec after 30.4 °C 42 % 37 km/h 9.8 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Nov 2025
After · 22 Dec 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 7 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 49 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak49 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1050 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
30123456789101112131415161718
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 · 620Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 November 2025 to 15 December 2025 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 December 2025 to 15 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,390 hectares (153.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (15,521 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 2 December 2025 → 29 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 December 2025 to 15 December 2025. 620 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.