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Tablelands fire, November 2020 Tablelands

Out · last detection 7 Dec 2020, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 25 November 2020 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,684 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1224th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 216 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
6,684ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
25 Nov 2020 – 8 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
25 Nov
2020
Heat detections
527
in a single hotspot: 115 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Dec 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Nov8 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

2526272829301234567

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
51km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 18 Dec.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 700 ha in 2017, 325 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 966 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Tablelands where it started
    6,734 ha reached on 25 Nov
    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)
25 Nov 30.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
26 Nov 31.6 °C 33 % 42 km/h 1.4 mm High 22
27 Nov 29.8 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
28 Nov 28.0 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Nov 29.3 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
30 Nov 31.7 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Dec 32.5 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Dec 31.8 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Dec 29.7 °C 41 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Dec 27.6 °C 46 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Dec 32.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Dec 35.8 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Dec 35.1 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Dec 33.0 °C 40 % 37 km/h 3.4 mm Low 10
9 Dec after 32.2 °C 41 % 40 km/h 8.6 mm Very low 5
10 Dec after 27.8 °C 56 % 39 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 5
11 Dec after 28.7 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
12 Dec after 28.3 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 13
13 Dec after 30.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Dec after 30.5 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Dec after 29.2 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 12
16 Dec after 30.5 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
17 Dec after 32.6 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Dec after 33.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 3.5 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Nov 2020
After · 15 Dec 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 · 527Every 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 25 November 2020 and 8 December 2020: 14 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 6,684 hectares (66.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tablelands (6,734 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 51 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.

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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.