How long did the Napranum fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 October 2018 and 14 October 2018: 7 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 6,691 hectares (66.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Napranum (6,726 ha, 3.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 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 · 2018-10-08 → 2018-10-14

Napranum fire, October 2018 Napranum

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2018, 03:49 UTC

The fire started on 8 October 2018 in Napranum, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,691 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1223th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 648 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026 Cook · 2026

Burnt area: 6,691ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 8 Oct 2018 – 14 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 8 Oct; 2018
Heat detections: 250; in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 406MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Oct14 Oct

Play back 14 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

8 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 14 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

40km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,197 ha in 2016, 3,497 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,777 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 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

Napranum where it started

6,726 ha reached on 8 Oct

3.3 %

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.

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 Oct	34.2 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
9 Oct	35.6 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Oct	36.2 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Oct	33.8 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Oct	34.5 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
13 Oct	35.1 °C	37 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
14 Oct	34.5 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.9 mm	High 24
15 Oct after	35.6 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
16 Oct after	35.9 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Oct after	36.0 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.9 mm	High 36
18 Oct after	34.1 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 Oct after	35.9 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Oct after	35.2 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Oct after	34.7 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Oct after	34.5 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	High 32
23 Oct after	35.2 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Oct after	35.3 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Oct 2018

After · 21 Oct 2018

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.

Detections table · 250Every 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 Napranum fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 October 2018 and 14 October 2018: 7 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 6,691 hectares (66.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Napranum (6,726 ha, 3.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 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. 250 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.

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