How long did the Napranum fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2020 to 1 October 2020 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,508 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Napranum (6,460 ha, 3.2 %); Cook (83 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2020-09-20 → 2020-10-01

Napranum fire, 20 September 2020 Napranum, Cook

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2020, 04:27 UTC

The fire started on 20 September 2020 in Napranum, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,508 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1273th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 223 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026 Cook · 2016 Cook · 2023

Burnt area: 6,508ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 20 Sept 2020 – 1 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 20 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 232; in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Sept1 Oct

Play back 1 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 30 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

67km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,686 ha in 2016, 1,475 ha in 2017, 2,040 ha in 2018, 1,810 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,238 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

6,460 ha reached on 20 Sept

3.2 %
Cook

83 ha reached on 22 Sept

0.0 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
14 Sept	31.5 °C	40 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Sept	32.8 °C	36 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
16 Sept	32.7 °C	40 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Sept	31.5 °C	53 %	57 km/h	0.5 mm	High 37
18 Sept	32.2 °C	46 %	67 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
19 Sept	31.5 °C	48 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Sept	34.8 °C	35 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Sept	35.3 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Sept	34.8 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Sept	35.0 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 Sept	36.0 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
25 Sept	35.6 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 38
26 Sept	36.6 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Sept	36.2 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Sept	35.9 °C	28 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Sept	33.9 °C	31 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
30 Sept	34.6 °C	27 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
1 Oct	34.7 °C	29 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
2 Oct after	33.3 °C	32 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Oct after	32.5 °C	38 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
4 Oct after	30.5 °C	49 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Oct after	33.2 °C	39 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Oct after	34.6 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
7 Oct after	35.0 °C	29 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Oct after	35.2 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
9 Oct after	35.2 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Oct after	34.7 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Oct after	35.3 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Sept 2020

After · 8 Oct 2020

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 · 232Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 September 2020 to 1 October 2020 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 September 2020 to 30 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,508 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Napranum (6,460 ha, 3.2 %); Cook (83 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 30 September 2020 → 1 October 2020.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 September 2020 to 30 September 2020. 232 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 2020, 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