How long did the Etheridge fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 December 2025 and 15 December 2025: 7 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 14,498 hectares (145.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etheridge (9,589 ha, 0.2 %); Mareeba (4,987 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.

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.

AU · Australia · 2025-12-09 → 2025-12-15

Etheridge fire, 9 December 2025 Etheridge, Mareeba

Out · last detection 16 Dec 2025, 03:27 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2025 in Etheridge, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,498 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 478th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 311 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area: 14,498ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 9 Dec 2025 – 15 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 9 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 456; in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 2.4GW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Dec 2025

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec15 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

910111213141516

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high

46km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 23 Dec.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,091 ha in 2016, 1,927 ha in 2017, 1,167 ha in 2019, 229 ha in 2021, 345 ha in 2022, 1,476 ha in 2023, 22 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,064 ha that had burned before.

1,167 ha Mareeba fire, September 2019 12,364 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Etheridge where it started

9,589 ha reached on 9 Dec

0.2 %
Mareeba

4,987 ha reached on 10 Dec

0.1 %

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)
9 Dec	32.7 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
10 Dec	33.5 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
11 Dec	33.5 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Dec	33.7 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Dec	34.5 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
14 Dec	34.6 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
15 Dec	36.1 °C	27 %	29 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 19
16 Dec after	34.9 °C	30 %	40 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 21
17 Dec after	30.7 °C	50 %	54 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 16
18 Dec after	32.2 °C	44 %	59 km/h	0.4 mm	High 23
19 Dec after	33.2 °C	33 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
20 Dec after	33.3 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
21 Dec after	34.3 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Dec after	37.3 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
23 Dec after	32.8 °C	44 %	33 km/h	4.9 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 2 Dec 2025

After · 22 Dec 2025

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 13 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1017 µg/m³

Optical depth0.36

789101112131415161718

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 456Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Etheridge fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 December 2025 and 15 December 2025: 7 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 14,498 hectares (145.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etheridge (9,589 ha, 0.2 %); Mareeba (4,987 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

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.

Where it burned