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Western Downs fire, 2 September 2026 Western Downs

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2026, 15:18 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2026 in Western Downs, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,006 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1736th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 858 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area
5,006ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
2 Sept 2026 – 24 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Sept
2026
Heat detections
476
in a single hotspot: 170 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Sept 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept24 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2345678911121314151617181920212223

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
45km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 572 ha in 2016, 3,009 ha in 2019, 173 ha in 2020, 254 ha in 2021, 173 ha in 2024, 640 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,409 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Western Downs where it started
    5,007 ha reached on 2 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)
2 Sept 25.9 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Sept 30.5 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 31.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 Sept 32.6 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Sept 32.5 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept 28.9 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 26.6 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Sept 26.5 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Sept 22.8 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Sept 22.6 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Sept 22.5 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Sept 24.5 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Sept 26.1 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept 28.5 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept 27.7 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept 24.5 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Sept 25.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 29.7 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept 32.2 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept 32.9 °C 8 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Sept 32.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept 28.5 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Sept 26.5 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm High 33
25 Sept after 26.4 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept after 26.2 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept after 28.0 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Sept after 28.8 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
29 Sept after 20.8 °C 54 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Sept after 26.1 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Oct after 28.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Oct after 29.9 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Oct after 31.0 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Oct after 30.9 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2026
After · 1 Oct 2026

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 2026 the air beside the fire reached 102 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak102 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10105 µg/m³
Optical depth0.81
31123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 476Every 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 2 September 2026 and 24 September 2026: 23 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 5,006 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Western Downs (5,007 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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
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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.