Etheridge fire, 16 October 2025 Etheridge, Mareeba
The fire started on 16 October 2025 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 327,753 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
It is the 2th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 4 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 327,753ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 16 Oct 2025 – 8 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 10,198
- in a single hotspot: 306 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 77.9GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 9 Nov.
This area had burned before
52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2016, 50,495 ha in 2017, 25,567 ha in 2019, 38,603 ha in 2020, 57,353 ha in 2021, 2,246 ha in 2022, 62,362 ha in 2023, 12,809 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 170,833 ha that had burned before.
- 21,876 ha Etheridge fire, December 2019 33,535 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 11,248 ha Etheridge fire, December 2021 11,318 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,720 ha Etheridge fire, November 2017 15,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,825 ha Etheridge fire, December 2023 10,243 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,883 ha Etheridge fire, December 2020 17,260 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,545 ha Etheridge fire, December 2023 9,115 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,055 ha Etheridge fire, November 2021 6,719 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,890 ha Etheridge fire, October 2021 7,902 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Etheridge where it started328,230 ha reached on 15 Oct8.3 %
-
17 ha reached on 7 Nov0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 17 Oct | 35.4 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 18 Oct | 37.1 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Oct | 39.9 °C | 12 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 20 Oct | 38.4 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Oct | 37.7 °C | 22 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 22 Oct | 36.8 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 23 Oct | 37.7 °C | 22 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 Oct | 38.7 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 25 Oct | 38.3 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Oct | 38.4 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Oct | 39.0 °C | 22 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Oct | 37.5 °C | 27 % | 62 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Oct | 37.9 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Oct | 38.8 °C | 22 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Oct | 38.4 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 1 Nov | 39.3 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 2 Nov | 38.6 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Nov | 35.6 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Nov | 37.7 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 38 |
| 5 Nov | 37.0 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 6 Nov | 38.4 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Nov | 37.2 °C | 24 % | 46 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Nov | 36.4 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Nov after | 36.4 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 4.6 mm | Moderate 17 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 23 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 158 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 10,198Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Etheridge fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 October 2025 and 8 November 2025: 24 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 327,753 hectares (3,277.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etheridge (328,230 ha, 8.3 %); Mareeba (17 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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
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.