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Tablelands fire, 24 October 2018 Tablelands, Charters Towers

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2018, 03:10 UTC

The fire started on 24 October 2018 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,042 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 860th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 443 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
9,042ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
24 Oct 2018 – 31 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
24 Oct
2018
Heat detections
409
in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
3.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Nov 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Oct31 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930311

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
48km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 9 Nov.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 847 ha in 2016, 3,803 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,198 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    9,115 ha reached on 22 Oct
    0.8 %
  2. Charters Towers
    5 ha
    0.0 %

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)
19 Oct 28.0 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.8 mm Very low 5
20 Oct 29.4 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
21 Oct 31.3 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
22 Oct 31.3 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
23 Oct 29.7 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.9 mm Low 10
24 Oct 30.7 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Oct 30.2 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
26 Oct 31.7 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Oct 34.8 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Oct 36.1 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Oct 35.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Oct 31.7 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
31 Oct 31.3 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
1 Nov after 29.2 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
2 Nov after 27.5 °C 50 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
3 Nov after 27.1 °C 51 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
4 Nov after 30.0 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Nov after 32.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Nov after 32.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Nov after 33.0 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Nov after 32.0 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
9 Nov after 28.3 °C 57 % 39 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Oct 2018
After · 7 Nov 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 · 409Every 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 24 October 2018 and 31 October 2018: 8 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 9,042 hectares (90.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tablelands (9,115 ha, 0.8 %); Charters Towers (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.

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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.