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Murweh fire, December 2017 Murweh

Out · last detection 20 Dec 2017, 14:47 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2017 in Murweh, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,424 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1289th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 614 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
6,424ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
8 Dec 2017 – 20 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Dec
2017
Heat detections
581
in a single hotspot: 499 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
14.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Dec 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec20 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

8910111213141516181920

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
47km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 21 Dec.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Murweh where it started
    6,431 ha reached on 8 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)
8 Dec 37.1 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Dec 35.8 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Dec 36.0 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Dec 35.1 °C 22 % 39 km/h 1.3 mm High 30
12 Dec 35.1 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Dec 35.5 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Dec 36.1 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Dec 36.8 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Dec 37.1 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec 38.2 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Dec 37.7 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Dec 38.3 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Dec 38.0 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Dec after 36.1 °C 25 % 33 km/h 1.1 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2017
After · 27 Dec 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 581Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Murweh fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 December 2017 and 20 December 2017: 13 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 6,424 hectares (64.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Murweh (6,431 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.