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Isaac fire, October 2025 Isaac

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2025, 04:21 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2025 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,829 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 261th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 162 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
23,829ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
4 Oct 2025 – 26 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Oct
2025
Heat detections
1,002
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
7.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct26 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

456781011121314151617181920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
48km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 27 Oct.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,209 ha in 2017, 867 ha in 2018, 477 ha in 2020, 1,107 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,704 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Isaac where it started
    23,978 ha reached on 4 Oct
    0.4 %

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)
4 Oct 29.4 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Oct 27.5 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Oct 26.7 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 27.8 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Oct 28.1 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Oct 28.7 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
10 Oct 28.6 °C 44 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Oct 29.2 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
12 Oct 29.7 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
13 Oct 30.2 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 20
14 Oct 31.0 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
15 Oct 29.3 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
16 Oct 28.2 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Oct 28.7 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Oct 30.5 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Oct 29.8 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Oct 30.1 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Oct 29.7 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Oct 29.9 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Oct 32.7 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Oct 32.0 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Oct 32.2 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Oct 32.7 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Oct after 33.2 °C 50 % 41 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2025
After · 2 Nov 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 6 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1040 µg/m³
Optical depth0.58
234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829
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 · 1,002Every 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 4 October 2025 and 26 October 2025: 23 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 23,829 hectares (238.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Isaac (23,978 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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.