How long did the Flinders (Qld) fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 December 2024 to 15 January 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 December 2024 to 13 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 58,445 hectares (584.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Flinders (Qld) (58,426 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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 · 2024-12-22 → 2025-01-15

Flinders (Qld) fire, 22 December 2024 Flinders (Qld)

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2025, 03:41 UTC

The fire started on 22 December 2024 in Flinders (Qld), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 58,445 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 82th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 24 in Australia in 2024, of 636.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Flinders (Qld) · 2020 Flinders (Qld) · 2021 Flinders (Qld) · 2021 Flinders (Qld) · 2025

Burnt area: 58,445ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 22 Dec 2024 – 15 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 22 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 2,480; in a single hotspot: 377 MW
Danger at start: 3; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Dec15 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

22 Dec 26 Dec 30 Dec 31 Dec 3 Jan 7 Jan 11 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

38°high

52km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 16 Jan.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,913 ha in 2020, 5,265 ha in 2021, 3,060 ha in 2022, 221 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 37% of the area of London (584 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

58,426 ha reached on 22 Dec

1.4 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
22 Dec	33.0 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
23 Dec	35.3 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Dec	37.0 °C	21 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Dec	36.3 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Dec	34.4 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
27 Dec	35.2 °C	42 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
28 Dec	36.8 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
29 Dec	38.1 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Dec	37.4 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
31 Dec	37.2 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Jan	35.2 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
2 Jan	35.7 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
3 Jan	35.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Jan	35.0 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Jan	35.2 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Jan	36.0 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Jan	36.7 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Jan	37.5 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Jan	37.1 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Jan	37.1 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
11 Jan	38.0 °C	21 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
12 Jan	37.9 °C	29 %	52 km/h	5.5 mm	Moderate 20
13 Jan	35.3 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
14 Jan	36.1 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
15 Jan	37.0 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
16 Jan after	35.0 °C	33 %	34 km/h	1.2 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Dec 2024

After · 22 Jan 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 9 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1039 µg/m³

Optical depth0.68

WHO 15

20212223242526272829303112345678910111213141516

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 · 2,480Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 December 2024 to 15 January 2025 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 December 2024 to 13 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 58,445 hectares (584.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Flinders (Qld) (58,426 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 December 2024 to 13 January 2025. 2,480 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 2025, 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