How long did the Western Downs fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2025 and 19 September 2025: 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 5,213 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Western Downs (5,212 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 51 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 · 2025-09-06 → 2025-09-19

Western Downs fire, 6 September 2025 Western Downs

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2025, 03:29 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2025 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,213 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1641th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1068 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area: 5,213ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 6 Sept 2025 – 19 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 6 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 277; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Sept 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept19 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

6789101112141516

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

51km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 74 ha in 2016, 573 ha in 2017, 466 ha in 2018, 391 ha in 2019, 64 ha in 2022, 316 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,460 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Western Downs where it started

5,212 ha reached on 6 Sept

0.1 %

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)
6 Sept	24.5 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Sept	24.1 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
8 Sept	25.0 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Sept	25.9 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
10 Sept	25.9 °C	42 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
11 Sept	21.0 °C	28 %	51 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
12 Sept	23.3 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
13 Sept	22.0 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
14 Sept	24.2 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
15 Sept	25.0 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
16 Sept	26.3 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
17 Sept	29.9 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
18 Sept	32.6 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 Sept	29.6 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Sept after	23.6 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
21 Sept after	27.4 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
22 Sept after	26.8 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Sept after	23.3 °C	18 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Sept after	24.7 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Sept after	25.7 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Sept after	28.4 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Sept after	28.1 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Sept after	30.7 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Sept after	32.4 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Aug 2025

After · 26 Sept 2025

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 9 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1031 µg/m³

Optical depth0.38

WHO 15

45678910111213141516171819202122

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 · 277Every 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 Western Downs fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2025 and 19 September 2025: 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 5,213 hectares (52.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Western Downs (5,212 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 51 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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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.

Where it burned