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AU · Australia · –

Etheridge fire, November 2026 Etheridge

Dying down · last detection 9 Nov 2026, 04:44 UTC

The fire started on 5 November 2026 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,760 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Etheridge · 2025Etheridge · 2019Etheridge · 2024Etheridge · 2017

Is it still active?

No detections since 9 Nov 2026, 04:44 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Wind, humidity and rain for the next 72 h

Burnt area
8,760ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
5 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Nov
2026
Heat detections
270
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
432MW
detected power per day, on average

The next 72 hours

The wind is blowing from the east and pushing westwards; no sharp shifts are expected until Fri 13, 04:00.

ECMWF IFS 0.25° at the centre of the fire · computed 9 Nov 2026, 14:57 UTC

Tue 10, 16:00, local time

First useful rain: 2.0 mm in 6 h

Chance of rain up to 29 % in those hours. It can slow the fire at the surface, but that does not mean it will go out.

Checked, no warning: no wind shifts of more than 60° nights recover humidity (peaks of 90 % or more)

Hour by hour, local time

Tap the strip to see each hour

Mean wind Gusts where it blows to Relative humidity Night (8 pm to 8 am) Rain (mm) · chance in %

Where is it blowing? The next 48 h

geoBoundaries/Australian Bureau of Statistics (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0))

At this hour

Places the fan reaches

    Is it heading my way?

    We compare your point with the fan for each hour. Your location never leaves your device.

    or tap the map

    This is not an official warning. It is a global model forecast with cells of about 25 km, at the centre of the fire: it cannot see valley winds or the winds the fire itself creates. The fan shows where the wind blows, not where the fire will spread. If in doubt, follow what the authorities say.

    Emergencies · Australia 000 Emergency number and official warnings

    Forecast: ECMWF IFS 0.25° (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), served by our own Open-Meteo instance; the chance of rain comes from the ECMWF ensemble. Variables: wind and gusts at 10 m, wind at 850 hPa, relative humidity and temperature at 2 m, rain. Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

    Fire: GWIS / Copernicus (reconstructed from VIIRS) (CC BY 4.0); hotspots from the last 24 h: VIIRS from NASA FIRMS. Boundaries: geoBoundaries/Australian Bureau of Statistics (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)).

    How it is worked out: wind shift = a change of more than 60° in 6 h or less, with at least 15 km/h before and after; no overnight recovery = peak humidity between 8 pm and 8 am stays below 55 %; useful rain = 2 mm or more in 6 h. The fan opens 18° plus however much the wind varies within ±3 h and reaches 25 km beyond the edge of the fire: one model cell, not a rate of spread. Methodology

    Where it burned

    HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov9 Nov
    9 Nov 2026

    How it evolved, day by day

    5 Nov 2026 · 92 MW · 18 6 Nov 2026 · 110 MW · 36 7 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 8 Nov 2026 · 1,286 MW · 174 9 Nov 2026 · 238 MW · 42
    5 Nov 6 Nov 7 Nov 8 Nov 9 Nov

    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
    29km/h · peak gust
    22%lowest humidity

    It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

    This area had burned before

    No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

    How big is it?

    10 km
    It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (88 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
      8,828 ha reached on 5 Nov
      0.2 %

    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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

    Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
    5 Nov 34.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 12.6 mm Moderate 15
    6 Nov 34.1 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
    7 Nov 33.7 °C 24 % 26 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 20
    8 Nov 35.4 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
    9 Nov 35.1 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16

    Before and after, from space

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

    Before · 29 Oct 2026
    After · 8 Nov 2026

    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 4 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

    PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
    Days over the guideline0 days
    PM1018 µg/m³
    Optical depth0.51
    3 Nov5 Nov7 Nov
    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 · 270Every 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 5 November 2026 to 9 November 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 November 2026 to 8 November 2026.
    How much area did it burn?
    The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,760 hectares (87.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
    Which municipalities burned?
    The fire only entered Etheridge (8,828 ha, 0.2 %).
    Is the Etheridge fire still active?
    No fire detections since 9 Nov 2026, 04:44 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
    What was the weather like?
    During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
    What weather is expected at the fire over the next 72 hours?
    The wind is blowing from the east and pushing westwards; no sharp shifts are expected until Fri 13, 04:00. First useful rain: 2.0 mm in 6 h (Tue 10, 16:00). Times are local time at the fire. ECMWF IFS forecast (Open-Meteo) computed 9 Nov 2026, 14:57 UTC; this is not an official warning.
    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 9 November 2026.
    1. Page published (8,760 ha).

    RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

    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 5 November 2026 to 8 November 2026. 270 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
    • We have not matched this page with any official record.
    • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
    • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

    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.