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Maranoa fire, August 2023 Maranoa

Out · last detection 27 Aug 2023, 03:08 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2023 in Maranoa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,564 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1067th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 784 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maranoa · 2017Maranoa · 2024Maranoa · 2023Maranoa · 2025

Burnt area
7,564ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
21 Aug 2023 – 26 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
21 Aug
2023
Heat detections
505
in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
466MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug26 Aug
27 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 2023 · 45 MW · 37 22 Aug 2023 · 875 MW · 76 23 Aug 2023 · 1,658 MW · 180 24 Aug 2023 · 492 MW · 154 25 Aug 2023 · 139 MW · 38 26 Aug 2023 · 43 MW · 10 27 Aug 2023 · 8 MW · 1
21 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug 27 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
46km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 581 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Maranoa where it started
    7,541 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
21 Aug 25.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Aug 25.6 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Aug 25.9 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Aug 25.8 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Aug 25.7 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Aug 25.0 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Aug after 24.8 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Aug after 25.2 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Aug after 25.6 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Aug after 25.4 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Aug after 27.4 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept after 25.3 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Sept after 28.1 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Sept after 27.3 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept after 27.2 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept after 28.7 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Sept after 28.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Sept after 29.4 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept after 26.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
9 Sept after 22.7 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Sept after 21.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 2023
After · 2 Sept 2023

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 24 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.26
1920212223242526272829
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 · 505Every 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 21 August 2023 and 26 August 2023: 6 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 7,564 hectares (75.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Maranoa (7,541 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 505 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.