How long did the Western Downs fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 August 2026 and 12 August 2026: 9 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 5,345 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Western Downs (5,342 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · 2026-08-04 → 2026-08-12

Western Downs fire, August 2026 Western Downs

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2026, 15:03 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2026 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,345 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1591th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 775 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area: 5,345ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 4 Aug 2026 – 12 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 272; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.5GW; sum of detected power

Play back 12 Aug 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug12 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

45678912

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

The weather it burned in

25°high

52km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 26 Aug.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,243 ha in 2018, 1,128 ha in 2019, 1,693 ha in 2020, 601 ha in 2024, 296 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,875 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Western Downs where it started

5,342 ha reached on 4 Aug

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)
4 Aug	23.2 °C	22 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Aug	23.9 °C	20 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
6 Aug	21.2 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
7 Aug	24.4 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Aug	25.1 °C	19 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 Aug	25.0 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Aug	18.0 °C	37 %	45 km/h	1.8 mm	Low 11
11 Aug	20.6 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
12 Aug	24.4 °C	26 %	52 km/h	1.2 mm	High 21
13 Aug after	18.9 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Aug after	21.9 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
15 Aug after	23.5 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Aug after	22.1 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
17 Aug after	20.2 °C	41 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
18 Aug after	21.6 °C	38 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Aug after	19.1 °C	49 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 21
20 Aug after	23.0 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
21 Aug after	23.6 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Aug after	22.2 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
23 Aug after	24.1 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Aug after	25.6 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Aug after	26.0 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
26 Aug after	21.9 °C	42 %	35 km/h	5.6 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jul 2026

After · 19 Aug 2026

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 6 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1022 µg/m³

Optical depth0.20

WHO 15

234567891011121314151617181920

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 · 272Every 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 4 August 2026 and 12 August 2026: 9 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 5,345 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Western Downs (5,342 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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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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