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Mareeba fire, 4 November 2017 Mareeba

Out · last detection 8 Nov 2017, 03:23 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2017 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,073 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1376th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 666 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Burnt area
6,073ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
4 Nov 2017 – 7 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Nov
2017
Heat detections
188
in a single hotspot: 65 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Nov 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov7 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

45678

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,054 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    6,114 ha reached on 4 Nov
    0.1 %

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)
4 Nov 37.3 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 40
5 Nov 37.9 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Nov 37.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Nov 38.2 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Nov after 39.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Nov after 34.7 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Nov after 34.0 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Nov after 34.3 °C 24 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Nov after 34.7 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Nov after 34.0 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Nov after 34.5 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Nov after 35.8 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Nov after 37.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Nov after 37.7 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2017
After · 14 Nov 2017

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 · 188Every 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 4 November 2017 and 7 November 2017: 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 6,073 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (6,114 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % 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

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.