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Tablelands fire, 16 December 2019 Tablelands

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2019, 16:25 UTC

The fire started on 16 December 2019 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 34,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 163th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 87 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
34,253ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
16 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Dec
2019
Heat detections
2,297
in a single hotspot: 396 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
28.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1617181920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
49km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 3 Jan.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,902 ha in 2016, 10 ha in 2017, 120 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,622 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    34,466 ha reached on 16 Dec
    3.0 %

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)
16 Dec 34.8 °C 23 % 40 km/h 1.2 mm High 30
17 Dec 36.0 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Dec 31.4 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
19 Dec 29.7 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Dec 31.6 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Dec 28.4 °C 51 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Dec 30.5 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Dec 31.7 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Dec 33.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Dec 37.8 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Dec after 33.5 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm High 26
27 Dec after 28.7 °C 52 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Dec after 29.4 °C 52 % 42 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 14
29 Dec after 26.9 °C 61 % 46 km/h 1.9 mm Low 9
30 Dec after 33.0 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
31 Dec after 33.4 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
1 Jan after 35.0 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Jan after 32.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jan after 28.4 °C 52 % 41 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 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 · 2,297Every 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 16 December 2019 and 25 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 34,253 hectares (342.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (34,466 ha, 3.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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.