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McKinlay fire, 9 December 2023 McKinlay

Out · last detection 1 Jan 2024, 05:09 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2023 in McKinlay, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,812 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 192th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 187 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carpentaria · 2023Carpentaria · 2017McKinlay · 2024Carpentaria · 2025

Burnt area
27,812ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
9 Dec 2023 – 1 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Dec
2023
Heat detections
838
in a single hotspot: 243 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
654MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec1 Jan
1 Jan 2024

How it evolved, day by day

9 Dec 2023 · 364 MW · 22 10 Dec 2023 · 258 MW · 23 13 Dec 2023 · 108 MW · 18 14 Dec 2023 · 10 MW · 3 15 Dec 2023 · 104 MW · 12 16 Dec 2023 · 0 MW · 1 17 Dec 2023 · 5 MW · 3 18 Dec 2023 · 32 MW · 18 19 Dec 2023 · 332 MW · 34 20 Dec 2023 · 19 MW · 2 21 Dec 2023 · 105 MW · 11 22 Dec 2023 · 631 MW · 54 23 Dec 2023 · 60 MW · 9 24 Dec 2023 · 375 MW · 10 25 Dec 2023 · 238 MW · 11 26 Dec 2023 · 53 MW · 22 27 Dec 2023 · 4,429 MW · 206 28 Dec 2023 · 2,376 MW · 121 29 Dec 2023 · 1,256 MW · 87 30 Dec 2023 · 1,654 MW · 80 31 Dec 2023 · 1,838 MW · 67 1 Jan 2024 · 148 MW · 24
9 Dec 15 Dec 19 Dec 23 Dec 27 Dec 31 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

42°high
52km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.3 mm on 2 Jan.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 826 ha in 2016, 481 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (278 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. McKinlay where it started
    27,791 ha reached on 9 Dec
    0.7 %

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)
9 Dec 39.3 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Dec 40.2 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Dec 40.0 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Dec 39.9 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec 39.5 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Dec 38.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Dec 37.7 °C 35 % 42 km/h 2.9 mm High 23
16 Dec 32.6 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
17 Dec 35.2 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
18 Dec 36.8 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
19 Dec 41.6 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec 40.3 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
21 Dec 39.8 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
22 Dec 40.8 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 38
23 Dec 41.9 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Dec 42.0 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Dec 41.1 °C 26 % 52 km/h 2.7 mm High 37
26 Dec 36.4 °C 36 % 26 km/h 19.4 mm Very low 4
27 Dec 38.4 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Dec 41.3 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Dec 41.4 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Dec 40.3 °C 34 % 39 km/h 1.3 mm High 24
31 Dec 42.5 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Jan 39.5 °C 36 % 37 km/h 7.5 mm Moderate 12
2 Jan after 34.9 °C 54 % 32 km/h 10.3 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Dec 2023
After · 8 Jan 2024

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 28 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak50 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1082 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930311234
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 · 838Every 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 McKinlay fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 December 2023 and 1 January 2024: 24 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 27,812 hectares (278.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered McKinlay (27,791 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 838 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.