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Flinders (Qld) fire, December 2019 Flinders (Qld)

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2020, 16:19 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2019 in Flinders (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,777 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 388th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 202 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Flinders (Qld) · 2024Flinders (Qld) · 2025Flinders (Qld) · 2021Flinders (Qld) · 2017

Burnt area
16,777ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
14 Dec 2019 – 6 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Dec
2019
Heat detections
1,163
in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start
62
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
343MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec6 Jan
6 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2019 · 129 MW · 22 15 Dec 2019 · 400 MW · 85 16 Dec 2019 · 501 MW · 84 17 Dec 2019 · 328 MW · 107 18 Dec 2019 · 1,139 MW · 146 19 Dec 2019 · 975 MW · 123 20 Dec 2019 · 978 MW · 101 21 Dec 2019 · 240 MW · 34 22 Dec 2019 · 203 MW · 34 23 Dec 2019 · 321 MW · 33 24 Dec 2019 · 102 MW · 27 25 Dec 2019 · 393 MW · 29 26 Dec 2019 · 570 MW · 34 27 Dec 2019 · 50 MW · 7 28 Dec 2019 · 30 MW · 9 29 Dec 2019 · 17 MW · 11 30 Dec 2019 · 167 MW · 27 31 Dec 2019 · 343 MW · 71 1 Jan 2020 · 123 MW · 36 2 Jan 2020 · 465 MW · 61 3 Jan 2020 · 62 MW · 18 4 Jan 2020 · 73 MW · 11 5 Jan 2020 · 604 MW · 47 6 Jan 2020 · 10 MW · 6
14 Dec 18 Dec 22 Dec 26 Dec 30 Dec 3 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
55km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 12 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 11% of the area of London (168 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
    16,789 ha reached on 14 Dec
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
14 Dec 37.6 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 62
15 Dec 39.2 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Dec 39.0 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
17 Dec 39.4 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Dec 37.0 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Dec 35.6 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Dec 36.0 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Dec 37.0 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Dec 37.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Dec 39.1 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Dec 40.4 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 58
26 Dec 40.0 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
27 Dec 34.1 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Dec 35.3 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Dec 35.2 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Dec 36.4 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Dec 37.2 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Jan 38.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Jan 37.8 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Jan 36.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 62
4 Jan 35.8 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
5 Jan 36.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Jan 36.6 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 Jan after 35.4 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 56
8 Jan after 35.5 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Jan after 36.8 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Jan after 37.2 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Jan after 38.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Jan after 35.0 °C 28 % 45 km/h 2.1 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2019
After · 13 Jan 2020

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 · 1,163Every 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 14 December 2019 and 6 January 2020: 24 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 16,777 hectares (167.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Flinders (Qld) (16,789 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.
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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,163 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 2020, 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.