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Richmond fire, January 2022 Richmond

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2022, 03:53 UTC

The fire started on 10 January 2022 in Richmond, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,612 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 704th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 179 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
10,612ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
10 Jan 2022 – 14 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Jan
2022
Heat detections
422
in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Jan 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jan14 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
44km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.6 mm on 19 Jan.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,474 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Richmond where it started
    10,629 ha reached on 10 Jan
    0.4 %

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)
10 Jan 38.4 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 43
11 Jan 39.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Jan 39.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jan 39.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Jan 37.2 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Jan after 38.5 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 41
16 Jan after 40.4 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jan after 38.3 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Jan after 38.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 4.9 mm Moderate 15
19 Jan after 31.6 °C 56 % 23 km/h 18.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jan 2022
After · 21 Jan 2022

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 · 422Every 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 Richmond fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 January 2022 and 14 January 2022: 5 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 10,612 hectares (106.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Richmond (10,629 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

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.