How long did the Flinders (Qld) fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2017 and 20 December 2017: 13 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 8,831 hectares (88.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Flinders (Qld) (7,688 ha, 0.2 %); Charters Towers (1,123 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

AU · Australia · 2017-12-08 → 2017-12-20

Flinders (Qld) fire, 8 December 2017 Flinders (Qld), Charters Towers

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2017, 04:56 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2017 in Flinders (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,831 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 883th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 404 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Charters Towers · 2017 Charters Towers · 2019 Charters Towers · 2023 Flinders (Qld) · 2017

Burnt area: 8,831ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 8 Dec 2017 – 20 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 8 Dec; 2017
Heat detections: 589; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 9; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 284MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec20 Dec

Play back 21 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

8 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 14 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 20 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

45km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.4 mm on 2 Jan.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 220 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.6% 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

Flinders (Qld) where it started

7,688 ha reached on 8 Dec

0.2 %
Charters Towers

1,123 ha reached on 7 Dec

0.0 %

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)
1 Dec	30.0 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 9
2 Dec	29.2 °C	53 %	29 km/h	9.9 mm	Very low 1
3 Dec	28.3 °C	59 %	23 km/h	15.0 mm	Very low 0
4 Dec	30.0 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
5 Dec	28.8 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
6 Dec	31.2 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
7 Dec	32.9 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
8 Dec	33.9 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Dec	31.8 °C	32 %	36 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 6
10 Dec	31.8 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
11 Dec	30.0 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 13
12 Dec	29.7 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
13 Dec	29.9 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
14 Dec	31.8 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
15 Dec	33.0 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
16 Dec	32.6 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
17 Dec	31.8 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
18 Dec	32.2 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Dec	33.8 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
20 Dec	32.1 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
21 Dec after	32.0 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Dec after	31.2 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Dec after	30.2 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Dec after	32.4 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Dec after	33.4 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
26 Dec after	33.6 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Dec after	33.5 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Dec after	33.2 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
29 Dec after	32.4 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Dec after	35.5 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
31 Dec after	35.5 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Jan after	33.3 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
2 Jan after	35.6 °C	29 %	38 km/h	23.4 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Dec 2017

After · 27 Dec 2017

Before After

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 · 589Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Flinders (Qld) fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2017 and 20 December 2017: 13 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 8,831 hectares (88.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Flinders (Qld) (7,688 ha, 0.2 %); Charters Towers (1,123 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 589 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.

Where it burned