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Satellite images show fires burning across Vic, Tas and SA

A string of hot and stormy days has left numerous fires burning across Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, with satellites capturing vast smoke plumes filling the sky across southeastern Australia.

A hot air mass swept through southeastern Australia late last week and early this week, sending temperatures soaring for several days and nights. In some areas, this heat was accompanied by enough moisture to trigger thunderstorms. This unique combination of intense heat and moisture gave rise to thunderstorms that created lighting without much rainfall. In some areas, this dry lightning ignited fires.

In Victoria alone, there were more than 100,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes detected between Sunday and Tuesday, with copious lightning also occurring above parts of Tas, SA and NSW.

The satellite images below show smoke emanating from fires in northwestern Tas and western Vic on Wednesday. Some of these fires were started by lightning strikes earlier this week.

Image: Visible satellite images showing smoke and clouds over northwest Tas on Wednesday, February 5, 2025.

Image: Visible satellite images showing smoke and clouds over Vic on Wednesday, February 5, 2025.

As of 3pm local time, Watch and Act alerts were in place for some of the fires in Vic and Tas. There were also two fires burning at Advice level in SA’s Mount Remarkable National Park.

The areas of southeastern Australia that are being impacted by fires this week had an unusually dry and hot start to 2025. The red areas on the map below show the areas that were direr than average in January, with parts of western Tas, southeast Vic and SA registering January rainfall totals that were in the lowest 10 percent of historical records.

Image: Rain deciles in January 2025. Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Visit the following websites for the latest information on fires burning in each state:

• Vic: https://emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/
• Tas: https://alert.tas.gov.au/?view=both
• SA: https://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/warnings-restrictions/warnings/incidents-warnings.jsp