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Mapoon fire, October 2019 Mapoon

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2019, 03:49 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2019 in Mapoon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,369 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1578th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 736 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,369ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
2 Oct 2019 – 17 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Oct
2019
Heat detections
202
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Oct 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct17 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2345678910111213141517

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
58km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 25 Oct.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,250 ha in 2016, 299 ha in 2017, 4,207 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,309 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mapoon where it started
    5,400 ha reached on 28 Sept
    10.0 %

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)
2 Oct 32.7 °C 40 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Oct 33.6 °C 33 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct 34.1 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Oct 34.1 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Oct 34.3 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 33.0 °C 40 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct 34.0 °C 32 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct 34.9 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Oct 35.0 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Oct 33.9 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Oct 32.6 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Oct 35.0 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Oct 35.3 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Oct 34.5 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Oct 35.4 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Oct 35.2 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Oct after 34.5 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Oct after 34.8 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Oct after 36.2 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Oct after 34.3 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Oct after 34.1 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Oct after 34.3 °C 35 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Oct after 34.3 °C 41 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Oct after 33.5 °C 42 % 41 km/h 6.7 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2019
After · 24 Oct 2019

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 · 202Every 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 Mapoon fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 October 2019 and 17 October 2019: 16 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 5,369 hectares (53.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mapoon (5,400 ha, 10.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
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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.

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.