Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Maranoa fire, October 2020 Maranoa

Out · last detection 7 Nov 2020, 15:43 UTC

The fire started on 26 October 2020 in Maranoa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 346th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 45 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
18,138ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
26 Oct 2020 – 7 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
26 Oct
2020
Heat detections
944
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
7.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Nov 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Oct7 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

2627282930311234567

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
62km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 8 Nov.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,424 ha in 2016, 9 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,304 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Maranoa where it started
    18,088 ha reached on 26 Oct
    0.3 %

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)
19 Oct 30.5 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Oct 32.6 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Oct 29.7 °C 34 % 53 km/h 2.5 mm Moderate 14
22 Oct 32.1 °C 26 % 42 km/h 1.1 mm High 25
23 Oct 30.8 °C 33 % 56 km/h 4.2 mm Low 10
24 Oct 26.3 °C 51 % 62 km/h 14.2 mm Very low 3
25 Oct 27.6 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm Low 10
26 Oct 28.7 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Oct 29.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Oct 31.0 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Oct 28.9 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Oct 34.5 °C 9 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Oct 31.2 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Nov 30.1 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Nov 31.2 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Nov 31.7 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Nov 34.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Nov 36.5 °C 10 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Nov 29.2 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Nov 31.8 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Nov after 26.8 °C 44 % 54 km/h 4.3 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Oct 2020
After · 14 Nov 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 944Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Maranoa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 October 2020 and 7 November 2020: 13 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 18,138 hectares (181.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Maranoa (18,088 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.