How long did the Isaac fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 November 2025 to 4 December 2025 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 November 2025 to 27 November 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,916 hectares (219.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Isaac (22,114 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-11-17 → 2025-12-04

Isaac fire, 17 November 2025 Isaac

Out · last detection 4 Dec 2025, 15:03 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2025 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,916 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 283th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 180 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 21,916ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 17 Nov 2025 – 4 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 942; in a single hotspot: 127 MW
Danger at start: 11; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 434MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov4 Dec

Play back 4 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

17 Nov 19 Nov 21 Nov 23 Nov 24 Nov 25 Nov 29 Nov 3 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

46km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 200 ha in 2023, 550 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (219 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

22,114 ha reached on 17 Nov

0.4 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
17 Nov	33.7 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
18 Nov	33.8 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
19 Nov	31.4 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	High 22
20 Nov	33.6 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Nov	35.4 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Nov	35.3 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
23 Nov	36.2 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
24 Nov	40.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Nov	38.9 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Nov	36.5 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.8 mm	High 23
27 Nov	38.3 °C	32 %	33 km/h	4.5 mm	Moderate 13
28 Nov	37.5 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
29 Nov	35.5 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
30 Nov	36.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
1 Dec	33.7 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 25
2 Dec	33.2 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Dec	33.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Dec	32.6 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Dec after	33.5 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Dec after	33.8 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Dec after	35.1 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Dec after	34.7 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Dec after	36.2 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Dec after	35.2 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Dec after	35.1 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
12 Dec after	34.8 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Dec after	35.5 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Dec after	35.6 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Nov 2025

After · 11 Dec 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1032 µg/m³

Optical depth0.63

WHO 15

15161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 942Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 November 2025 to 4 December 2025 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 November 2025 to 27 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,916 hectares (219.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Isaac (22,114 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

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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 17 November 2025 to 27 November 2025. 942 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned