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Mareeba fire, 15 November 2016 Mareeba

Out · last detection 19 Nov 2016, 15:10 UTC

The fire started on 15 November 2016 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 411th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 82 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
16,133ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
15 Nov 2016 – 18 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Nov
2016
Heat detections
425
in a single hotspot: 221 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
9.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Nov 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Nov18 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
50km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 28 Nov.

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
    16,237 ha reached on 15 Nov
    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)
15 Nov 38.5 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Nov 39.2 °C 7 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Nov 39.2 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Nov 37.7 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Nov after 37.1 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Nov after 37.4 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Nov after 38.3 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Nov after 38.6 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Nov after 39.1 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Nov after 37.8 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
25 Nov after 38.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 39
26 Nov after 40.9 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Nov after 40.0 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Nov after 36.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 3.1 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Nov 2016
After · 25 Nov 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 · 425Every 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 15 November 2016 and 18 November 2016: 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 16,133 hectares (161.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (16,237 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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.