How long did the Lockhart River fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2021 to 13 October 2021 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2021 to 13 October 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,453 hectares (54.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lockhart River (5,482 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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 · 2021-09-27 → 2021-10-13

Lockhart River fire, September 2021 Lockhart River

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2021, 03:18 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2021 in Lockhart River, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,453 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1564th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1748 with a page). Number 406 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lockhart River · 2018 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2018 Lockhart River · 2018

Burnt area: 5,453ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 27 Sept 2021 – 13 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 198; in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 97MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept13 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 30 Sept 3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 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

34°high

59km/h · peak gust

37%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 22 Oct.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 160 ha in 2016, 4,972 ha in 2018, 60 ha in 2019, 385 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,806 ha that had burned before.

4,710 ha Lockhart River fire, September 2018 14,045 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (55 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

Lockhart River where it started

5,482 ha reached on 27 Sept

1.5 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
27 Sept	29.5 °C	51 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
28 Sept	30.5 °C	45 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
29 Sept	30.0 °C	50 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
30 Sept	30.5 °C	44 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Oct	31.8 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Oct	33.4 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Oct	32.4 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
4 Oct	32.7 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Oct	33.0 °C	39 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Oct	30.1 °C	46 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Oct	30.8 °C	43 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Oct	30.5 °C	50 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Oct	29.4 °C	55 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Oct	30.3 °C	45 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Oct	31.7 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
12 Oct	31.5 °C	46 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
13 Oct	33.6 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Oct after	33.0 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Oct after	31.5 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
16 Oct after	33.3 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Oct after	33.4 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Oct after	33.3 °C	42 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Oct after	32.6 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Oct after	34.0 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Oct after	33.4 °C	41 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Oct after	32.4 °C	49 %	35 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Sept 2021

After · 20 Oct 2021

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 · 198Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lockhart River fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2021 to 13 October 2021 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2021 to 13 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,453 hectares (54.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lockhart River (5,482 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 29 September 2021 → 27 September 2021.

RSS Changes to this page

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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.

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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 29 September 2021 to 13 October 2021. 198 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 2020, 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