Australia Fire Map — Live Satellite Hotspots

Each dot is a thermal anomaly, not a confirmed bushfire. In Australian conditions it very often means:

• hazard reduction burning — planned burns run by agencies in the cooler months to cut fuel loads before the season;
• bush and grass fires in the interior, often far from any settlement;
• gas flares at extraction sites in the north and west.

A line of dots usually marks a fire front running with the wind. Isolated low-power readings are most often routine burning.

Colour and size follow radiative power in megawatts. Below 15 MW is a weak signal, 15–50 MW moderate, above 50 MW an active front — those get a flame icon, and when several cluster together the map groups them with a counter.

Mind the delay: satellites pass over a given point only a few times a day. Across an area as vast as Australia, a fresh fire can appear on the map hours late.

Satellite data source: NASA FIRMS.

In the south the peak falls in January and February. In Queensland and the Northern Territory the season shifts with the dry, which ends earlier.

The map is therefore almost never empty — different parts of the continent burn at different times of year. Judging the risk means reading the map alongside the local Fire Danger Rating.