How long did the Mount Isa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 April 2024 to 30 April 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 April 2024 to 28 April 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,262 hectares (152.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mount Isa (15,411 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

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 · 2024-04-16 → 2024-04-30

Mount Isa fire, 16 April 2024 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 28 Apr 2024, 04:56 UTC

The fire started on 16 April 2024 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,262 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 441th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 146 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2024 Mount Isa · 2025 Mount Isa · 2023 Cloncurry · 2021

Burnt area: 15,262ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 16 Apr 2024 – 30 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 16 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 584; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 372MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Apr30 Apr

Play back 28 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

16 Apr 19 Apr 21 Apr 22 Apr 23 Apr 25 Apr 27 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high

56km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,214 ha in 2020, 111 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.6% of the area of London (153 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

Mount Isa where it started

15,411 ha reached on 16 Apr

0.4 %

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)
16 Apr	32.9 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Apr	31.4 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
18 Apr	30.9 °C	40 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
19 Apr	30.8 °C	29 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Apr	27.3 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Apr	25.8 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
22 Apr	28.2 °C	25 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Apr	29.9 °C	31 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Apr	31.9 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Apr	29.6 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
26 Apr	28.1 °C	24 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Apr	29.6 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Apr	30.6 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Apr	29.7 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
30 Apr	30.7 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 May after	30.5 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
2 May after	29.8 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 May after	30.2 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 May after	29.3 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 May after	28.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 May after	28.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 May after	29.1 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 May after	28.3 °C	47 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 May after	30.1 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 May after	28.8 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Apr 2024

After · 7 May 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 23 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1024 µg/m³

Optical depth0.38

WHO 15

14151617181920212223242526272829301

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 · 584Every 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 Mount Isa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 April 2024 to 30 April 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 April 2024 to 28 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,262 hectares (152.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mount Isa (15,411 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 April 2024 → 30 April 2024.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 16 April 2024 to 28 April 2024. 584 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