Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Etheridge fire, 7 December 2025 Etheridge

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2025, 04:04 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2025 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,330 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1598th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1038 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
5,330ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
7 Dec 2025 – 14 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Dec
2025
Heat detections
246
in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec14 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

7891011121314

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
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 15 Dec.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,263 ha in 2017, 100 ha in 2018, 732 ha in 2022, 259 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,644 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Etheridge where it started
    5,380 ha reached on 7 Dec
    0.1 %

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)
7 Dec 37.7 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Dec 35.3 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
9 Dec 34.5 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Dec 36.4 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Dec 35.3 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Dec 35.1 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Dec 37.2 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Dec 35.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
15 Dec after 36.3 °C 26 % 47 km/h 2.5 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2025
After · 21 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 15 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.68
567891011121314151617
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 · 246Every 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 7 December 2025 and 14 December 2025: 8 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 5,330 hectares (53.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Etheridge (5,380 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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

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.