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Flinders (Qld) fire, 10 December 2021 Flinders (Qld)

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2021, 04:06 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2021 in Flinders (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,023 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 204th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 37 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Flinders (Qld) · 2019Flinders (Qld) · 2025Flinders (Qld) · 2024Flinders (Qld) · 2025

Burnt area
27,023ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
10 Dec 2021 – 24 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Dec
2021
Heat detections
1,236
in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
444MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec24 Dec
24 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Dec 2021 · 105 MW · 18 11 Dec 2021 · 182 MW · 33 12 Dec 2021 · 48 MW · 16 13 Dec 2021 · 44 MW · 12 14 Dec 2021 · 467 MW · 63 15 Dec 2021 · 672 MW · 118 16 Dec 2021 · 18 MW · 1 17 Dec 2021 · 41 MW · 24 18 Dec 2021 · 1,359 MW · 238 19 Dec 2021 · 1,283 MW · 226 20 Dec 2021 · 571 MW · 150 21 Dec 2021 · 744 MW · 187 22 Dec 2021 · 398 MW · 49 23 Dec 2021 · 432 MW · 73 24 Dec 2021 · 297 MW · 28
10 Dec 13 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 22 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

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 Dec.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,392 ha in 2017, 133 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (270 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
    27,013 ha reached on 10 Dec
    0.6 %

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)
10 Dec 34.1 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Dec 35.2 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Dec 35.9 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Dec 33.7 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Dec 35.0 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Dec 36.7 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Dec 36.4 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Dec 33.5 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Dec 34.1 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Dec 35.6 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Dec 35.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Dec 35.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Dec 36.9 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Dec 36.1 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Dec 35.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Dec after 35.2 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Dec after 32.6 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
27 Dec after 32.7 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
28 Dec after 28.9 °C 49 % 26 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Dec 2021
After · 31 Dec 2021

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 · 1,236Every 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 10 December 2021 and 24 December 2021: 15 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 27,023 hectares (270.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Flinders (Qld) (27,013 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,236 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.