Sizing up Australia’s bushfires by Reuters

The scale and destruction from Australia’s 2020 bushfire season were unprecedented, fuelled by a prolonged drought that left the Australia’s east coast tinder dry.

The physical scale of the bushfires was unlike anything seen in recent years and it can be a difficult task for readers to fully comprehend the figures mentioned in stories.

Reuters set out to put that destruction into perspective by visualising the size of fires and comparing them to the shape and size of some well-known cities, countries, and territories.