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Western Downs fire, 28 February 2023 Western Downs

Out · last detection 6 Mar 2023, 15:26 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2023 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,755 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 317th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 281 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
19,755ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
28 Feb 2023 – 6 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
28 Feb
2023
Heat detections
924
in a single hotspot: 386 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
18.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Mar 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb6 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

28123456

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 8 Mar.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 346 ha in 2016, 59 ha in 2017, 188 ha in 2020, 839 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Western Downs where it started
    19,978 ha reached on 28 Feb
    0.5 %

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)
28 Feb 35.4 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Mar 36.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Mar 32.3 °C 36 % 38 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 13
3 Mar 33.1 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Mar 33.3 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Mar 33.8 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Mar 35.0 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Mar after 33.8 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Mar after 29.6 °C 41 % 37 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Feb 2023
After · 13 Mar 2023

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 2 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 300 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak300 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10431 µg/m³
Optical depth2.29
262728123456789
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 · 924Every 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 Western Downs fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 February 2023 and 6 March 2023: 7 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 19,755 hectares (197.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Western Downs (19,978 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.