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Isaac fire, 13 September 2025 Isaac

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2025, 14:56 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2025 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,563 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1521th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 984 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Isaac · 2025Isaac · 2025Isaac · 2024Isaac · 2024

Burnt area
5,563ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
13 Sept 2025 – 27 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Sept
2025
Heat detections
395
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
136MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept27 Sept
26 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2025 · 17 MW · 10 15 Sept 2025 · 142 MW · 32 16 Sept 2025 · 65 MW · 20 17 Sept 2025 · 52 MW · 16 18 Sept 2025 · 201 MW · 70 19 Sept 2025 · 517 MW · 117 20 Sept 2025 · 188 MW · 32 21 Sept 2025 · 37 MW · 6 23 Sept 2025 · 6 MW · 2 24 Sept 2025 · 23 MW · 12 25 Sept 2025 · 109 MW · 38 26 Sept 2025 · 275 MW · 33
14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
46km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 225 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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. Isaac where it started
    5,607 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.1 %

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.

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)
13 Sept 23.9 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept 26.4 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept 28.1 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Sept 30.1 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Sept 32.5 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept 33.7 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Sept 32.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Sept 27.3 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Sept 30.8 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 34
22 Sept 30.2 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
23 Sept 28.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
24 Sept 27.5 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept 28.1 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept 29.9 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Sept 29.2 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept after 33.1 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Sept after 34.2 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Sept after 33.9 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct after 34.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct after 36.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 54
3 Oct after 31.0 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Oct after 31.5 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct after 30.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Oct after 31.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Oct after 32.6 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2025
After · 4 Oct 2025

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 29 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
1112131415161718192021222324252627282930
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 · 395Every 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 Isaac fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 September 2025 and 27 September 2025: 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 5,563 hectares (55.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Isaac (5,607 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 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

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. 395 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.