How long did the Mount Isa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 September 2024 and 25 September 2024: 14 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 68,868 hectares (688.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mount Isa (68,952 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-09-12 → 2024-09-25

Mount Isa fire, 12 September 2024 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2024, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2024 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 68,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 64th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 13 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2017 Mount Isa · 2021 Mount Isa · 2022 Burke · 2024

Burnt area: 68,868ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 12 Sept 2024 – 25 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 12 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 2,212; in a single hotspot: 314 MW
Danger at start: 61; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept25 Sept

Play back 25 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

57km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 6 Oct.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,530 ha in 2017, 660 ha in 2021, 2,073 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 43% of the area of London (689 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

68,952 ha reached on 12 Sept

1.6 %

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)
12 Sept	35.1 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
13 Sept	32.7 °C	15 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
14 Sept	33.5 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
15 Sept	33.9 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
16 Sept	33.4 °C	16 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
17 Sept	29.7 °C	23 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
18 Sept	28.2 °C	40 %	34 km/h	2.1 mm	Moderate 17
19 Sept	33.6 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Sept	35.0 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Sept	35.6 °C	9 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
22 Sept	34.4 °C	11 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
23 Sept	35.6 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
24 Sept	35.8 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
25 Sept	35.9 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
26 Sept after	30.6 °C	41 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 44
27 Sept after	33.6 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
28 Sept after	34.5 °C	8 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
29 Sept after	37.0 °C	5 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
30 Sept after	37.1 °C	10 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
1 Oct after	36.9 °C	15 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
2 Oct after	36.6 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
3 Oct after	36.8 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
4 Oct after	36.3 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Oct after	36.3 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
6 Oct after	36.8 °C	26 %	34 km/h	1.3 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Sept 2024

After · 2 Oct 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 14 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 173 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak173 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10247 µg/m³

Optical depth2.67

WHO 15

10111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 2,212Every 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 12 September 2024 and 25 September 2024: 14 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 68,868 hectares (688.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mount Isa (68,952 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,212 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