Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Mount Isa fire, 10 December 2023 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2023, 04:06 UTC

The fire started on 10 December 2023 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,944 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1170th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 878 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
6,944ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
10 Dec 2023 – 14 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Dec
2023
Heat detections
255
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Dec14 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1011121314

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
48km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Mount Isa where it started
    6,977 ha reached on 10 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)
10 Dec 38.5 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Dec 36.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec 40.5 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Dec 39.0 °C 28 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm High 32
14 Dec 38.5 °C 34 % 35 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 18
15 Dec after 40.2 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.5 mm High 38
16 Dec after 39.6 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Dec after 39.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Dec after 39.6 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Dec after 40.2 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
20 Dec after 38.9 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm High 37
21 Dec after 39.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Dec after 39.0 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
23 Dec after 41.9 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Dec after 43.0 °C 11 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Dec 2023
After · 21 Dec 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 11 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
891011121314151617
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 · 255Every 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 10 December 2023 and 14 December 2023: 5 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 6,944 hectares (69.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mount Isa (6,977 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.