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Gladstone fire, 7 December 2019 Gladstone

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2019, 03:51 UTC

The fire started on 7 December 2019 in Gladstone, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,337 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1595th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 742 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,337ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
7 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
7 Dec
2019
Heat detections
333
in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
2.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

789101113141516171819202122232425

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
47km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,355 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Gladstone where it started
    5,370 ha reached on 7 Dec
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
7 Dec 34.4 °C 36 % 42 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 16
8 Dec 33.6 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Dec 31.5 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Dec 32.4 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Dec 32.9 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
12 Dec 33.3 °C 38 % 33 km/h 3.1 mm Low 9
13 Dec 35.5 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Dec 34.7 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
15 Dec 35.1 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
16 Dec 37.6 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Dec 32.6 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Dec 30.5 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Dec 31.0 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Dec 32.9 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Dec 33.5 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Dec 33.9 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Dec 32.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Dec 33.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Dec 33.5 °C 35 % 38 km/h 9.1 mm Low 6
26 Dec after 29.3 °C 44 % 51 km/h 2.0 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Nov 2019
After · 1 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 · 333Every 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 Gladstone fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 December 2019 and 25 December 2019: 19 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 5,337 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gladstone (5,370 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.