How Big Are the Australian Bushfires?

The Guardian has updated its visualization of the Australian bushfires. How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? is a very simple but very effective visualization of the huge size of the fires currently burning in Australia.

The Guardian's map consists of a simple 5.8m hectare sized square which you can overlay on any location on Earth. The map includes a drop-down menu which allows you to see the square on top of a number of well known global cities. However you can also use the search box to overlay the square on a town or city of your choice.

When the Guardian first released its interactive map at the beginning of December it used a 2.2m hectare sized square to show the size of the bushfires which have been burning on the east coast of Australia. It has now updated the size of the square to include the fires burning in Victoria, South Australia, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia.