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Tablelands fire, 8 December 2019 Tablelands

Out · last detection 17 Dec 2019, 03:03 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2019 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,692 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1222th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 574 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
6,692ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
8 Dec 2019 – 17 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Dec
2019
Heat detections
320
in a single hotspot: 205 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Energy released
4.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec17 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

8911121314151617

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
52km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 21 Dec.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 489 ha in 2017, 241 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    6,742 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.6 %

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)
8 Dec 33.2 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Dec 29.3 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Dec 27.7 °C 65 % 52 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 5
11 Dec 28.3 °C 63 % 46 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 4
12 Dec 31.5 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 13
13 Dec 34.8 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Dec 35.4 °C 25 % 39 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 20
15 Dec 34.7 °C 34 % 39 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 12
16 Dec 34.2 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Dec 34.5 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Dec after 29.4 °C 50 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Dec after 28.7 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
20 Dec after 29.6 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
21 Dec after 27.9 °C 55 % 43 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2019
After · 24 Dec 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 · 320Every 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 8 December 2019 and 17 December 2019: 10 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 6,692 hectares (66.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (6,742 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.