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Western Downs fire, December 2025 Western Downs

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2025, 03:12 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2025 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,514 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1266th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 818 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
6,514ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
18 Dec 2025 – 22 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Dec
2025
Heat detections
280
in a single hotspot: 350 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
4.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec22 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

19202122

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
44km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 23 Dec.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 630 ha in 2016, 113 ha in 2017, 453 ha in 2018, 449 ha in 2019, 127 ha in 2020, 1,612 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,433 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Western Downs where it started
    6,520 ha reached on 19 Dec
    0.2 %

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)
18 Dec 32.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
19 Dec 35.5 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Dec 35.7 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Dec 35.7 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Dec 37.4 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Dec after 34.0 °C 39 % 40 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Dec 2025
After · 29 Dec 2025

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 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 56: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak113 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth0.91
16171819202122232425
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 · 280Every 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 18 December 2025 and 22 December 2025: 5 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 6,514 hectares (65.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Western Downs (6,520 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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.