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Tablelands fire, 26 September 2018 Tablelands

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2018, 15:35 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2018 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,025 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 508th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 233 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
14,025ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
26 Sept 2018 – 11 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
26 Sept
2018
Heat detections
509
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
3.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2627282930123456789101112

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
55km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12,500 ha in 2016, 412 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,135 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    14,131 ha reached on 26 Sept
    1.2 %

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)
26 Sept 22.5 °C 47 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Sept 24.1 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
28 Sept 24.3 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
29 Sept 24.0 °C 45 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
30 Sept 25.2 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Oct 23.5 °C 48 % 55 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
2 Oct 21.5 °C 50 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
3 Oct 21.9 °C 51 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
4 Oct 24.7 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Oct 28.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Oct 27.2 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Oct 26.5 °C 46 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
8 Oct 26.6 °C 47 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Oct 27.9 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Oct 28.8 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Oct 29.3 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Oct after 28.5 °C 45 % 41 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 11
13 Oct after 25.1 °C 62 % 38 km/h 39.8 mm Very low 0
14 Oct after 25.6 °C 69 % 34 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 1
15 Oct after 25.2 °C 73 % 34 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 2
16 Oct after 27.1 °C 54 % 31 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2018
After · 18 Oct 2018

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 · 509Every 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 Tablelands fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 September 2018 and 11 October 2018: 16 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 14,025 hectares (140.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (14,131 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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
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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.

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.