Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Tablelands fire, 15 December 2019 Tablelands

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2019, 03:53 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2019 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,508 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 816th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 394 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
9,508ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
513
in a single hotspot: 233 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Energy released
4.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

15161718192022232425

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
49km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 4 Jan.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 59 ha in 2016, 1,657 ha in 2017, 101 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,684 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    9,576 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.8 %

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)
15 Dec 33.3 °C 34 % 39 km/h 2.6 mm Low 10
16 Dec 32.8 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Dec 33.1 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Dec 28.0 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Dec 27.4 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
20 Dec 28.3 °C 48 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
21 Dec 26.5 °C 55 % 43 km/h 1.2 mm Low 10
22 Dec 29.2 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Dec 29.9 °C 40 % 43 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
24 Dec 31.9 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Dec 36.5 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
26 Dec after 30.7 °C 44 % 44 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 13
27 Dec after 28.2 °C 51 % 38 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
28 Dec after 28.1 °C 54 % 42 km/h 1.7 mm Low 8
29 Dec after 27.8 °C 51 % 49 km/h 1.3 mm Low 10
30 Dec after 30.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
31 Dec after 30.5 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 21
1 Jan after 33.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Jan after 31.3 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Jan after 28.6 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
4 Jan after 26.1 °C 66 % 44 km/h 2.2 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2019
After · 1 Jan 2020

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 · 513Every 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 15 December 2019 and 25 December 2019: 11 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 9,508 hectares (95.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (9,576 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.