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Maranoa fire, 13 September 2023 Maranoa

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2023, 14:22 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2023 in Maranoa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,188 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 980th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 714 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maranoa · 2017Maranoa · 2021Maranoa · 2025Maranoa · 2016

Burnt area
8,188ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
13 Sept 2023 – 28 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Sept
2023
Heat detections
598
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
355MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2023 · 91 MW · 19 15 Sept 2023 · 131 MW · 47 16 Sept 2023 · 54 MW · 4 17 Sept 2023 · 14 MW · 2 20 Sept 2023 · 974 MW · 70 21 Sept 2023 · 1,421 MW · 189 22 Sept 2023 · 1,036 MW · 204 23 Sept 2023 · 158 MW · 52 24 Sept 2023 · 15 MW · 5 25 Sept 2023 · 13 MW · 5 28 Sept 2023 · 1 MW · 1
14 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 28 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
45km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,241 ha in 2016, 482 ha in 2017, 3,048 ha in 2018, 2,469 ha in 2020, 191 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,154 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (82 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
    8,150 ha reached on 14 Sept
    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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
13 Sept 24.5 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Sept 25.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept 25.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Sept 26.6 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Sept 27.9 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept 27.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Sept 27.1 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Sept 30.4 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept 32.9 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Sept 29.2 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Sept 25.8 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 24.4 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 25.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Sept 27.2 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Sept 29.7 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Sept 29.2 °C 22 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Sept after 29.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Sept after 28.7 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Oct after 28.3 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct after 29.1 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Oct after 27.9 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Oct after 29.6 °C 32 % 53 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 43
5 Oct after 25.3 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
6 Oct after 25.7 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Oct after 27.1 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Oct after 26.4 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2023
After · 5 Oct 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 22 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
1819202122232425262728
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 · 598Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2023 to 28 September 2023 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 September 2023 to 25 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,188 hectares (81.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Maranoa (8,150 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 September 2023 → 28 September 2023.
  2. Start date: 20 September 2023 → 13 September 2023.

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
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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 September 2023 to 25 September 2023. 598 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.