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Flinders (Qld) fire, 5 December 2017 Flinders (Qld), Charters Towers

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2018, 04:12 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2017 in Flinders (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 49,361 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 106th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 29 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Charters Towers · 2019Charters Towers · 2023Flinders (Qld) · 2021Charters Towers · 2020

Burnt area
49,361ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
5 Dec 2017 – 2 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
5 Dec
2017
Heat detections
2,583
in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
574MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec2 Jan
3 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Dec 2017 · 1,731 MW · 118 6 Dec 2017 · 188 MW · 30 7 Dec 2017 · 98 MW · 13 8 Dec 2017 · 110 MW · 7 9 Dec 2017 · 26 MW · 9 10 Dec 2017 · 114 MW · 51 11 Dec 2017 · 145 MW · 28 12 Dec 2017 · 263 MW · 63 13 Dec 2017 · 380 MW · 50 14 Dec 2017 · 670 MW · 119 15 Dec 2017 · 1,072 MW · 153 16 Dec 2017 · 884 MW · 153 17 Dec 2017 · 375 MW · 68 18 Dec 2017 · 996 MW · 161 19 Dec 2017 · 627 MW · 101 20 Dec 2017 · 313 MW · 98 21 Dec 2017 · 1,584 MW · 154 22 Dec 2017 · 518 MW · 117 23 Dec 2017 · 444 MW · 87 24 Dec 2017 · 944 MW · 149 25 Dec 2017 · 2,084 MW · 213 26 Dec 2017 · 605 MW · 138 27 Dec 2017 · 836 MW · 117 28 Dec 2017 · 622 MW · 160 29 Dec 2017 · 375 MW · 101 30 Dec 2017 · 380 MW · 102 31 Dec 2017 · 195 MW · 16 2 Jan 2018 · 57 MW · 6 3 Jan 2018 · 5 MW · 1
5 Dec 10 Dec 15 Dec 20 Dec 25 Dec 30 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

34°high
48km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 5 Jan.

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 31% of the area of London (494 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. Flinders (Qld) where it started
    26,637 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.6 %
  2. Charters Towers
    22,759 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.3 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
28 Nov 27.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
29 Nov 29.6 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 11
30 Nov 28.0 °C 46 % 39 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 5
1 Dec 30.3 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Low 11
2 Dec 28.7 °C 55 % 40 km/h 8.8 mm Very low 1
3 Dec 26.9 °C 64 % 34 km/h 29.1 mm Very low 0
4 Dec 27.6 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 2
5 Dec 26.2 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
6 Dec 30.5 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
7 Dec 30.9 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Dec 32.5 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
9 Dec 31.3 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 17
10 Dec 30.8 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 15
11 Dec 29.5 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 18
12 Dec 28.9 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 16
13 Dec 29.3 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Dec 31.2 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
15 Dec 32.2 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Dec 31.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Dec 31.1 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Dec 31.6 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Dec 32.9 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Dec 31.8 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Dec 32.3 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Dec 30.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Dec 29.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Dec 32.0 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
25 Dec 32.9 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Dec 33.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Dec 32.8 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
28 Dec 32.2 °C 34 % 38 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 18
29 Dec 31.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Dec 33.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Dec 33.1 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Jan 32.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 18
2 Jan 31.3 °C 44 % 44 km/h 2.7 mm Low 9
3 Jan after 32.0 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Jan after 34.4 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Jan after 30.3 °C 39 % 49 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2017
After · 9 Jan 2018

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 · 2,583Every 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 Flinders (Qld) fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 December 2017 and 2 January 2018: 29 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 49,361 hectares (493.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Flinders (Qld) (26,637 ha, 0.6 %); Charters Towers (22,759 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,583 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.