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Mount Isa fire, 19 October 2023 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 9 Nov 2023, 05:03 UTC

The fire started on 19 October 2023 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 178,552 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 10th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 9 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2018Mount Isa · 2024Mount Isa · 2024Mount Isa · 2024

Burnt area
178,552ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
19 Oct 2023 – 9 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
19 Oct
2023
Heat detections
7,044
in a single hotspot: 533 MW
Danger at start
70
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Oct9 Nov
9 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

19 Oct 2023 · 35 MW · 6 20 Oct 2023 · 736 MW · 71 21 Oct 2023 · 2,124 MW · 270 22 Oct 2023 · 7,707 MW · 621 23 Oct 2023 · 7,747 MW · 590 24 Oct 2023 · 11,814 MW · 514 25 Oct 2023 · 2,550 MW · 329 26 Oct 2023 · 4,243 MW · 485 27 Oct 2023 · 4,050 MW · 243 28 Oct 2023 · 732 MW · 146 29 Oct 2023 · 1,324 MW · 240 30 Oct 2023 · 491 MW · 88 31 Oct 2023 · 619 MW · 116 1 Nov 2023 · 1,158 MW · 90 2 Nov 2023 · 728 MW · 164 3 Nov 2023 · 3,288 MW · 441 4 Nov 2023 · 8,428 MW · 737 5 Nov 2023 · 12,950 MW · 895 6 Nov 2023 · 6,026 MW · 565 7 Nov 2023 · 4,582 MW · 283 8 Nov 2023 · 1,383 MW · 140 9 Nov 2023 · 50 MW · 10
19 Oct 23 Oct 27 Oct 31 Oct 4 Nov 5 Nov 8 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

40°high
57km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 10 Nov.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,609 ha in 2018, 4,693 ha in 2019, 993 ha in 2020, 314 ha in 2021, 434 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1 times the area of London (1,786 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. Mount Isa where it started
    179,801 ha reached on 19 Oct
    4.1 %

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 area1.0 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of 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)
19 Oct 36.4 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
20 Oct 37.6 °C 5 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
21 Oct 38.0 °C 3 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
22 Oct 37.5 °C 6 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
23 Oct 37.5 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
24 Oct 40.5 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
25 Oct 39.6 °C 9 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 102
26 Oct 34.4 °C 9 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 100
27 Oct 32.9 °C 3 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 93
28 Oct 36.0 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
29 Oct 37.1 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
30 Oct 38.0 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
31 Oct 37.0 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 58
1 Nov 39.4 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Nov 40.5 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
3 Nov 40.3 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
4 Nov 39.4 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
5 Nov 37.6 °C 6 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
6 Nov 37.7 °C 5 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
7 Nov 39.5 °C 6 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
8 Nov 38.0 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
9 Nov 36.8 °C 24 % 46 km/h 2.1 mm Very high 45
10 Nov after 31.2 °C 44 % 34 km/h 4.2 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Oct 2023
After · 16 Nov 2023

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 23 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10139 µg/m³
Optical depth1.98
171819202122232425262728293031123456789101112
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 · 7,044Every 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 19 October 2023 and 9 November 2023: 22 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 178,552 hectares (1,785.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mount Isa (179,801 ha, 4.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 102, 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

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
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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 7,044 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.