How long did the Isaac fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2018 and 1 October 2018: 12 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 24,294 hectares (242.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Isaac (22,473 ha, 0.4 %); Mackay (1,808 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-09-20 → 2018-10-01

Isaac fire, September 2018 Isaac, Mackay

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2018, 15:24 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2018 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,294 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 252th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 106 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 24,294ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 20 Sept 2018 – 1 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 20 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 1,334; in a single hotspot: 177 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 725MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept1 Oct

Play back 2 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept 2 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

49km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 12 Oct.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5 ha in 2016, 575 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (243 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

Isaac where it started

22,473 ha reached on 20 Sept

0.4 %
Mackay

1,808 ha reached on 21 Sept

0.2 %

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)
20 Sept	31.7 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Sept	27.6 °C	10 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
22 Sept	25.2 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Sept	26.6 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Sept	27.1 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Sept	25.9 °C	38 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Sept	26.6 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Sept	29.6 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Sept	28.4 °C	33 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Sept	29.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Sept	30.6 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Oct	28.3 °C	33 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
2 Oct after	27.1 °C	31 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
3 Oct after	27.5 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
4 Oct after	29.5 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
5 Oct after	30.4 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Oct after	31.7 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Oct after	30.1 °C	33 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Oct after	29.0 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Oct after	31.8 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Oct after	34.2 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Oct after	33.8 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Oct after	28.5 °C	45 %	45 km/h	3.1 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Sept 2018

After · 8 Oct 2018

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.

Detections table · 1,334Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Isaac fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 September 2018 and 1 October 2018: 12 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 24,294 hectares (242.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Isaac (22,473 ha, 0.4 %); Mackay (1,808 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 1,334 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.

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