How long did the Mount Isa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2024 and 5 May 2024: 18 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 12,028 hectares (120.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mount Isa (12,041 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2024-04-18 → 2024-05-05

Mount Isa fire, 18 April 2024 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 5 May 2024, 15:36 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2024 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,028 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 614th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 203 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2019 Mount Isa · 2023 Mount Isa · 2026 Burke · 2023

Burnt area: 12,028ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 18 Apr 2024 – 5 May 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 466; in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 82MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr5 May

Play back 5 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 21 Apr 24 Apr 27 Apr 1 May 4 May

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

54km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,523 ha in 2018, 63 ha in 2019, 325 ha in 2022, 12 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (120 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

12,041 ha reached on 18 Apr

0.3 %

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)
18 Apr	31.6 °C	44 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
19 Apr	31.6 °C	34 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Apr	29.4 °C	21 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Apr	28.0 °C	22 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Apr	29.2 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Apr	30.5 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 Apr	32.6 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Apr	31.4 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Apr	30.3 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Apr	30.7 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Apr	31.9 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
29 Apr	30.4 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
30 Apr	31.4 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 May	31.1 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 May	31.0 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
3 May	30.7 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 May	30.7 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 May	30.2 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 May after	30.0 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 May after	30.9 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 May after	30.6 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 May after	31.2 °C	46 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 May after	30.2 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 May after	29.1 °C	46 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 May after	29.5 °C	39 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 May after	29.5 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 May after	30.8 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 May after	31.1 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Apr 2024

After · 12 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 21 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1013 µg/m³

Optical depth0.19

16171819202122232425262728293012345678

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 · 466Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 April 2024 and 5 May 2024: 18 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 12,028 hectares (120.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mount Isa (12,041 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 466 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