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Mareeba fire, 12 November 2016 Mareeba

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2016, 15:16 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2016 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,210 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 238th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 44 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
25,210ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
12 Nov 2016 – 10 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Nov
2016
Heat detections
1,272
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
8.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Dec 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov10 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

12131415161718192021222324252627293012345678910

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
56km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 12 Dec.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    25,343 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.5 %

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)
7 Nov 31.4 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Nov 32.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
9 Nov 33.5 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Nov 35.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Nov 36.4 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Nov 35.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 41
13 Nov 33.5 °C 29 % 34 km/h 6.0 mm Low 10
14 Nov 30.4 °C 46 % 32 km/h 6.1 mm Very low 3
15 Nov 32.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
16 Nov 29.8 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Nov 30.2 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
18 Nov 30.4 °C 24 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Nov 29.6 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Nov 30.5 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
21 Nov 29.7 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
22 Nov 32.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Nov 33.2 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Nov 34.7 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Nov 35.7 °C 17 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Nov 33.6 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Nov 31.3 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Nov 30.4 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Nov 32.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
30 Nov 33.3 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Dec 32.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
2 Dec 35.2 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Dec 34.2 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Dec 32.1 °C 20 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Dec 33.6 °C 20 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Dec 33.1 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Dec 32.0 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Dec 32.4 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Dec 34.2 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 32.0 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Dec after 30.3 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
12 Dec after 30.4 °C 38 % 47 km/h 4.3 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Nov 2016
After · 17 Dec 2016

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 · 1,272Every 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 Mareeba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 November 2016 and 10 December 2016: 29 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 25,210 hectares (252.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (25,343 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.