How long did the Western Downs fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 October 2025 and 27 October 2025: 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 5,831 hectares (58.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Western Downs (5,889 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

AU · Australia · 2025-10-17 → 2025-10-27

Western Downs fire, October 2025 Western Downs

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2025, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2025 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,831 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1450th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 930 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Western Downs · 2023 Western Downs · 2019 Western Downs · 2023 Western Downs · 2023

Burnt area: 5,831ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 17 Oct 2025 – 27 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Oct; 2025
Heat detections: 292; in a single hotspot: 230 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 378MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct27 Oct

Play back 27 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 27 Oct

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

61km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 4 Nov.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 84 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (58 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Western Downs where it started

5,889 ha reached on 16 Oct

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
10 Oct	33.4 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Oct	34.3 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Oct	32.7 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Oct	30.3 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
14 Oct	30.9 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Oct	31.8 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
16 Oct	29.6 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
17 Oct	31.8 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Oct	34.1 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.7 mm	High 33
19 Oct	33.5 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Oct	34.0 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Oct	36.0 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Oct	35.7 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Oct	35.1 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
24 Oct	33.7 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
25 Oct	33.2 °C	17 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Oct	35.2 °C	32 %	53 km/h	1.3 mm	High 32
27 Oct	34.9 °C	22 %	61 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 49
28 Oct after	20.8 °C	60 %	49 km/h	15.3 mm	Very low 1
29 Oct after	28.4 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.7 mm	Low 10
30 Oct after	30.6 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 Oct after	33.2 °C	28 %	38 km/h	1.3 mm	High 26
1 Nov after	33.4 °C	36 %	51 km/h	8.1 mm	Low 8
2 Nov after	35.6 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Nov after	34.4 °C	37 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Nov after	26.7 °C	23 %	41 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Oct 2025

After · 3 Nov 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 23 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak33 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1036 µg/m³

Optical depth0.36

WHO 15

15161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 292Every 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 17 October 2025 and 27 October 2025: 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 5,831 hectares (58.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Western Downs (5,889 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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 do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 292 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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