How long did the McKinlay fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 November 2024 to 17 November 2024 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2024 to 11 November 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,739 hectares (257.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered McKinlay (25,736 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-11-02 → 2024-11-17

McKinlay fire, November 2024 McKinlay

Out · last detection 17 Nov 2024, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 2 November 2024 in McKinlay, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,739 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 227th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 70 in Australia in 2024, of 636.

Compare with…

Suggestions: McKinlay · 2023 McKinlay · 2026 Richmond · 2024 Richmond · 2017

Burnt area: 25,739ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 2 Nov 2024 – 17 Nov 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 2 Nov; 2024
Heat detections: 331; in a single hotspot: 113 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 257MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Nov17 Nov

Play back 17 Nov 2024

How it evolved, day by day

2 Nov 8 Nov 10 Nov 12 Nov 15 Nov 17 Nov

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

49km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 348 ha in 2016, 97 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 343 ha that had burned before.

90 ha McKinlay fire, December 2023 27,812 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (257 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

McKinlay where it started

25,736 ha reached on 2 Nov

0.6 %

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)
2 Nov	38.9 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
3 Nov	40.0 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
4 Nov	40.0 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
5 Nov	42.0 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
6 Nov	41.0 °C	10 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
7 Nov	41.0 °C	13 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
8 Nov	41.7 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
9 Nov	41.5 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
10 Nov	40.9 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
11 Nov	40.6 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
12 Nov	40.5 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
13 Nov	41.1 °C	29 %	40 km/h	3.3 mm	High 35
14 Nov	38.3 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
15 Nov	39.1 °C	32 %	36 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 42
16 Nov	38.4 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Nov	38.9 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
18 Nov after	35.0 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 43
19 Nov after	35.9 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Nov after	31.7 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 43
21 Nov after	38.0 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 44
22 Nov after	37.5 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Nov after	37.5 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Nov after	38.7 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 Nov after	37.4 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
26 Nov after	37.8 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
27 Nov after	37.4 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Oct 2024

After · 24 Nov 2024

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 9 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1069 µg/m³

Optical depth1.73

WHO 15

311234567891011121314

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 · 331Every 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 McKinlay fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 November 2024 to 17 November 2024 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2024 to 11 November 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,739 hectares (257.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered McKinlay (25,736 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very 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

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.

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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 2 November 2024 to 11 November 2024. 331 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