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Mount Isa fire, 5 December 2022 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 8 Dec 2022, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2022 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,942 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1013th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 277 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
7,942ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
5 Dec 2022 – 8 Dec 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Dec
2022
Heat detections
210
in a single hotspot: 88 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Dec 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec8 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

5678

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
40km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 18 Dec.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,000 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Mount Isa where it started
    8,013 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.2 %

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)
5 Dec 36.9 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Dec 39.1 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Dec 40.7 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Dec 42.2 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Dec after 40.3 °C 4 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Dec after 40.6 °C 6 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Dec after 40.8 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Dec after 40.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Dec after 38.8 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Dec after 36.4 °C 5 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
15 Dec after 35.5 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Dec after 36.8 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Dec after 39.0 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
18 Dec after 38.3 °C 13 % 47 km/h 1.5 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2022
After · 15 Dec 2022

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 6 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1043 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
34567891011
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 · 210Every 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 Mount Isa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 December 2022 and 8 December 2022: 4 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 7,942 hectares (79.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mount Isa (8,013 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.