How long did the Mackay fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 November 2024 and 19 November 2024: 4 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 6,071 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mackay (6,098 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

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 · 2024-11-16 → 2024-11-19

Mackay fire, 16 November 2024 Mackay

Out · last detection 19 Nov 2024, 15:22 UTC

The fire started on 16 November 2024 in Mackay, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,071 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1378th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 501 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 6,071ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 16 Nov 2024 – 19 Nov 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 16 Nov; 2024
Heat detections: 179; in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 398MW; sum of detected power

Play back 19 Nov 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Nov19 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

16171819

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

49km/h · peak gust

47%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 29 Nov.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,934 ha in 2017, 271 ha in 2020, 3,463 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,599 ha that had burned before.

4,785 ha Mackay fire, October 2017 9,477 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mackay where it started

6,098 ha reached on 16 Nov

0.8 %

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 Nov	28.8 °C	47 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 19
17 Nov	27.4 °C	54 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Nov	27.1 °C	52 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
19 Nov	27.2 °C	47 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
20 Nov after	25.7 °C	71 %	32 km/h	11.8 mm	Very low 0
21 Nov after	22.1 °C	88 %	41 km/h	35.0 mm	Very low 0
22 Nov after	24.6 °C	72 %	48 km/h	10.1 mm	Very low 0
23 Nov after	25.8 °C	63 %	49 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 1
24 Nov after	26.8 °C	55 %	47 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 2
25 Nov after	26.6 °C	54 %	43 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 5
26 Nov after	27.7 °C	51 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
27 Nov after	29.0 °C	47 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
28 Nov after	28.7 °C	51 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 8
29 Nov after	27.6 °C	61 %	35 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Nov 2024

After · 26 Nov 2024

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 18 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1043 µg/m³

Optical depth0.39

WHO 15

141516171819202122

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 · 179Every 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 Mackay fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 November 2024 and 19 November 2024: 4 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 6,071 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mackay (6,098 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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