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Isaac fire, 28 November 2025 Isaac

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2025, 04:03 UTC

The fire started on 28 November 2025 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,748 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1037th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 652 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
7,748ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
28 Nov 2025 – 14 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
28 Nov
2025
Heat detections
238
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
143MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Nov14 Dec
14 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

28 Nov 2025 · 820 MW · 48 30 Nov 2025 · 10 MW · 1 1 Dec 2025 · 159 MW · 35 2 Dec 2025 · 292 MW · 62 3 Dec 2025 · 174 MW · 35 4 Dec 2025 · 87 MW · 15 5 Dec 2025 · 133 MW · 17 6 Dec 2025 · 122 MW · 13 7 Dec 2025 · 29 MW · 5 8 Dec 2025 · 1 MW · 1 10 Dec 2025 · 11 MW · 2 13 Dec 2025 · 3 MW · 2 14 Dec 2025 · 14 MW · 2
28 Nov 1 Dec 3 Dec 5 Dec 7 Dec 10 Dec 14 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

37°high
52km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 24 Dec.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9 ha in 2023, 248 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (77 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
    7,808 ha reached on 28 Nov
    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.

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)
28 Nov 37.3 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Nov 35.9 °C 36 % 39 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 19
30 Nov 35.5 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Dec 36.5 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Dec 32.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Dec 32.9 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Dec 32.3 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Dec 33.4 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Dec 34.7 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Dec 35.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Dec 34.5 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Dec 35.2 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Dec 35.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Dec 34.4 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Dec 34.4 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Dec 35.5 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Dec 35.5 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 38
15 Dec after 30.7 °C 42 % 20 km/h 6.1 mm Very low 4
16 Dec after 30.5 °C 40 % 42 km/h 2.0 mm Low 10
17 Dec after 33.3 °C 36 % 52 km/h 4.2 mm Low 10
18 Dec after 33.1 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
19 Dec after 34.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Dec after 34.6 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Dec after 36.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Dec after 36.8 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Dec after 34.5 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Dec after 35.3 °C 37 % 29 km/h 5.1 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Nov 2025
After · 21 Dec 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 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1047 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
26272829301234567891011121314151617
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 · 238Every 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 28 November 2025 and 14 December 2025: 17 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 7,748 hectares (77.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Isaac (7,808 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 52 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 · 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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 238 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.