How long did the Mount Isa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2025 to 25 January 2025 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 January 2025 to 23 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,417 hectares (234.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mount Isa (23,614 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-01-13 → 2025-01-25

Mount Isa fire, 13 January 2025 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 25 Jan 2025, 16:08 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2025 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,417 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 269th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 165 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2024 Mount Isa · 2024 Mount Isa · 2024 Mount Isa · 2023

Burnt area: 23,417ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 13 Jan 2025 – 25 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 13 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 998; in a single hotspot: 242 MW
Danger at start: 70; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan25 Jan

Play back 25 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jan 16 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 22 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

54km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 3 Feb.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,531 ha in 2019, 458 ha in 2020, 156 ha in 2023, 499 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,459 ha that had burned before.

433 ha Mount Isa fire, November 2024 18,221 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (234 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

23,614 ha reached on 14 Jan

0.5 %

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)
13 Jan	40.4 °C	22 %	49 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 70
14 Jan	40.9 °C	23 %	35 km/h	2.6 mm	High 37
15 Jan	37.5 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 48
16 Jan	39.9 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
17 Jan	39.4 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
18 Jan	40.5 °C	6 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
19 Jan	39.8 °C	10 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
20 Jan	38.8 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
21 Jan	36.7 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Jan	38.3 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
23 Jan	39.0 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 46
24 Jan	40.0 °C	23 %	54 km/h	4.4 mm	Very high 43
25 Jan	40.1 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
26 Jan after	40.1 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
27 Jan after	38.4 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 50
28 Jan after	39.9 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
29 Jan after	40.2 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
30 Jan after	40.5 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
31 Jan after	40.7 °C	17 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
1 Feb after	39.0 °C	21 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 93
2 Feb after	32.6 °C	43 %	81 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 62
3 Feb after	28.0 °C	72 %	58 km/h	4.3 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Jan 2025

After · 1 Feb 2025

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 16 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak40 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1044 µg/m³

Optical depth0.53

WHO 15

11121314151617181920212223242526

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 · 998Every 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 13 January 2025 to 25 January 2025 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 January 2025 to 23 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,417 hectares (234.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mount Isa (23,614 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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 · 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?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 January 2025 to 23 January 2025. 998 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