How long did the Tablelands fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 September 2022 and 1 October 2022: 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 8,163 hectares (81.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tablelands (7,269 ha, 0.6 %); Mareeba (926 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 50 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-09-21 → 2022-10-01

Tablelands fire, September 2022 Tablelands, Mareeba

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2022, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 21 September 2022 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,163 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 981th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 270 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area: 8,163ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 21 Sept 2022 – 1 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 21 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 269; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.5GW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Oct 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Sept1 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

212223242526272829301

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

50km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 10 Oct.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 18 ha in 2016, 3,679 ha in 2018, 38 ha in 2019, 877 ha in 2020, 181 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,295 ha that had burned before.

3,679 ha Tablelands fire, September 2018 35,924 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Tablelands where it started

7,269 ha reached on 21 Sept

0.6 %
Mareeba

926 ha reached on 25 Sept

0.0 %

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)
21 Sept	29.6 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
22 Sept	31.6 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Sept	30.4 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
24 Sept	30.7 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
25 Sept	28.9 °C	42 %	41 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
26 Sept	28.1 °C	45 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Sept	28.2 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
28 Sept	27.5 °C	44 %	37 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 20
29 Sept	25.8 °C	50 %	29 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 12
30 Sept	27.8 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Oct	28.2 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
2 Oct after	29.2 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
3 Oct after	29.7 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
4 Oct after	26.3 °C	55 %	50 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 19
5 Oct after	25.6 °C	55 %	49 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 20
6 Oct after	26.8 °C	59 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 14
7 Oct after	27.5 °C	52 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
8 Oct after	29.3 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Oct after	30.1 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
10 Oct after	27.4 °C	51 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Sept 2022

After · 8 Oct 2022

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1026 µg/m³

Optical depth0.25

1920212223242526272829301234

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 269Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tablelands fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 September 2022 and 1 October 2022: 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 8,163 hectares (81.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tablelands (7,269 ha, 0.6 %); Mareeba (926 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 50 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned