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Napranum fire, August 2023 Cook, Napranum

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2023, 15:54 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2023 in Napranum, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,269 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1322th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 969 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2018Cook · 2026Cook · 2018Cook · 2016

Burnt area
6,269ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
12 Aug 2023 – 22 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
12 Aug
2023
Heat detections
212
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
163MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug22 Aug
22 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 2023 · 150 MW · 18 13 Aug 2023 · 63 MW · 11 14 Aug 2023 · 6 MW · 4 15 Aug 2023 · 58 MW · 17 16 Aug 2023 · 67 MW · 15 17 Aug 2023 · 38 MW · 12 18 Aug 2023 · 160 MW · 30 19 Aug 2023 · 1,198 MW · 94 20 Aug 2023 · 56 MW · 9 21 Aug 2023 · 1 MW · 1 22 Aug 2023 · 1 MW · 1
12 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
51km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,008 ha in 2016, 1,353 ha in 2018, 677 ha in 2019, 940 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,308 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4% of the area of London (63 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

  1. Cook
    5,179 ha reached on 12 Aug
    0.0 %
  2. Napranum where it started
    1,104 ha reached on 12 Aug
    0.6 %

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 Aug 29.3 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
13 Aug 29.3 °C 48 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
14 Aug 30.0 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
15 Aug 31.2 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Aug 32.0 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug 32.2 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Aug 32.4 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Aug 32.1 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Aug 30.4 °C 42 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Aug 30.4 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Aug 31.1 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Aug after 31.0 °C 45 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Aug after 29.8 °C 55 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
25 Aug after 31.6 °C 39 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Aug after 30.4 °C 39 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug after 30.5 °C 43 % 55 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
28 Aug after 31.4 °C 34 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug after 30.7 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Aug after 32.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Aug after 32.6 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Sept after 32.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Aug 2023
After · 29 Aug 2023

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 21 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
1011121314151617181920212223
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 · 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 12 August 2023 to 22 August 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 August 2023 to 20 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,269 hectares (62.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (5,179 ha, 0.0 %); Napranum (1,104 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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.

Report an error
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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 12 August 2023 to 20 August 2023. 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.