How long did the Richmond fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2019 and 28 December 2019: 15 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 14,492 hectares (144.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Richmond (14,497 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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 · 2019-12-14 → 2019-12-28

Richmond fire, December 2019 Richmond

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2019, 15:29 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2019 in Richmond, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,492 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 480th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 241 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Richmond · 2024 Richmond · 2021 Richmond · 2023 Croydon · 2021

Burnt area: 14,492ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 14 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 14 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 680; in a single hotspot: 201 MW
Danger at start: 56; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 378MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec28 Dec

Play back 29 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 17 Dec 20 Dec 23 Dec 26 Dec

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

10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 8 Jan.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.2% of the area of London (145 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

Richmond where it started

14,497 ha reached on 14 Dec

0.5 %

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)
14 Dec	38.3 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
15 Dec	40.6 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
16 Dec	39.9 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
17 Dec	39.6 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 58
18 Dec	39.0 °C	18 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
19 Dec	39.2 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
20 Dec	39.1 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
21 Dec	39.3 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
22 Dec	39.7 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
23 Dec	40.1 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
24 Dec	40.9 °C	13 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
25 Dec	40.3 °C	18 %	54 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 68
26 Dec	40.3 °C	12 %	48 km/h	0.7 mm	Extreme 67
27 Dec	35.9 °C	20 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 49
28 Dec	36.9 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
29 Dec after	37.7 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
30 Dec after	38.2 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
31 Dec after	38.1 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
1 Jan after	38.7 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
2 Jan after	40.0 °C	13 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
3 Jan after	39.4 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
4 Jan after	37.8 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
5 Jan after	38.3 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
6 Jan after	37.7 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
7 Jan after	35.7 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
8 Jan after	36.3 °C	28 %	33 km/h	2.3 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Dec 2019

After · 4 Jan 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 · 680Every 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 Richmond fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2019 and 28 December 2019: 15 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 14,492 hectares (144.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Richmond (14,497 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 680 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