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Tablelands fire, 4 September 2019 Tablelands

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2019, 04:38 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2019 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,026 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1731th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 799 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,026ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
4 Sept 2019 – 7 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Sept
2019
Heat detections
176
in a single hotspot: 130 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept7 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

4567

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
44km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 373 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 268 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    5,057 ha reached on 4 Sept
    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)
4 Sept 24.6 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept 25.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Sept 25.5 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 26.9 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept after 24.5 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept after 24.1 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept after 22.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept after 19.4 °C 46 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Sept after 19.6 °C 50 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
13 Sept after 21.3 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Sept after 23.1 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept after 22.1 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Sept after 21.7 °C 49 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Sept after 24.4 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2019
After · 14 Sept 2019

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 · 176Every 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 4 September 2019 and 7 September 2019: 4 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 5,026 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (5,057 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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
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.