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Fraser Coast fire, 20 November 2019 Fraser Coast

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2019, 04:09 UTC

The fire started on 20 November 2019 in Fraser Coast, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,296 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 373th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 192 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Fraser Coast · 2016

Burnt area
17,296ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
35days
20 Nov 2019 – 24 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Nov
2019
Heat detections
1,271
in a single hotspot: 431 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
548MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Nov24 Dec
24 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

20 Nov 2019 · 24 MW · 7 21 Nov 2019 · 1,038 MW · 51 22 Nov 2019 · 375 MW · 49 23 Nov 2019 · 463 MW · 42 24 Nov 2019 · 479 MW · 52 25 Nov 2019 · 390 MW · 38 26 Nov 2019 · 212 MW · 18 27 Nov 2019 · 105 MW · 16 28 Nov 2019 · 446 MW · 54 29 Nov 2019 · 421 MW · 58 30 Nov 2019 · 2,466 MW · 83 1 Dec 2019 · 199 MW · 16 3 Dec 2019 · 29 MW · 3 4 Dec 2019 · 1,318 MW · 44 5 Dec 2019 · 1,162 MW · 65 6 Dec 2019 · 4,927 MW · 108 7 Dec 2019 · 368 MW · 54 8 Dec 2019 · 104 MW · 25 9 Dec 2019 · 365 MW · 58 10 Dec 2019 · 218 MW · 43 11 Dec 2019 · 168 MW · 11 12 Dec 2019 · 47 MW · 3 13 Dec 2019 · 94 MW · 11 15 Dec 2019 · 16 MW · 3 16 Dec 2019 · 21 MW · 8 17 Dec 2019 · 390 MW · 40 18 Dec 2019 · 89 MW · 6 19 Dec 2019 · 406 MW · 57 20 Dec 2019 · 739 MW · 83 21 Dec 2019 · 487 MW · 89 22 Dec 2019 · 439 MW · 58 23 Dec 2019 · 87 MW · 16 24 Dec 2019 · 7 MW · 2
20 Nov 25 Nov 30 Nov 6 Dec 11 Dec 17 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

40°high
59km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 20.1 mm on 25 Dec.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,913 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (173 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. Fraser Coast where it started
    17,164 ha reached on 20 Nov
    2.4 %

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 area0.21 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.21 hectares of 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)
20 Nov 31.9 °C 38 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Nov 28.5 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Nov 28.8 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Nov 29.6 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Nov 30.2 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Nov 28.9 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Nov 29.9 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Nov 32.7 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Nov 31.2 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Nov 30.6 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Nov 30.9 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Dec 31.3 °C 40 % 58 km/h 0.5 mm High 36
2 Dec 36.3 °C 23 % 50 km/h 2.8 mm High 30
3 Dec 34.1 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Dec 35.3 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Dec 36.3 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Dec 37.3 °C 20 % 58 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 57
7 Dec 35.4 °C 38 % 53 km/h 3.1 mm Moderate 21
8 Dec 35.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Dec 31.6 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Dec 31.8 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Dec 33.6 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Dec 32.4 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Dec 32.3 °C 44 % 50 km/h 0.4 mm High 33
14 Dec 30.3 °C 53 % 40 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 15
15 Dec 32.3 °C 45 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
16 Dec 39.5 °C 16 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Dec 28.5 °C 45 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Dec 27.6 °C 43 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Dec 29.1 °C 39 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Dec 30.5 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Dec 31.0 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Dec 31.1 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Dec 31.8 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Dec 32.1 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Dec after 27.5 °C 63 % 34 km/h 20.1 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Nov 2019
After · 31 Dec 2019

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 · 1,271Every 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 Fraser Coast fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 November 2019 to 24 December 2019 (35 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 November 2019 to 23 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,296 hectares (173.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Fraser Coast (17,164 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 December 2019 → 24 December 2019.

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
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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 November 2019 to 23 December 2019. 1,271 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.