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Mareeba fire, 17 October 2018 Mareeba, Cook

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2018, 04:26 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2018 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,564 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 534th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 247 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
13,564ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
17 Oct 2018 – 28 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
17 Oct
2018
Heat detections
435
in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Energy released
3.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct28 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

171819202122232425262728

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
51km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 628 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    13,193 ha reached on 17 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. Cook
    401 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.0 %

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)
17 Oct 36.0 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
18 Oct 36.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Oct 35.7 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Oct 36.2 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Oct 36.9 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Oct 35.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Oct 36.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Oct 36.4 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Oct 36.4 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Oct 36.8 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Oct 38.6 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
28 Oct 38.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Oct after 39.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Oct after 38.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
31 Oct after 37.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Nov after 35.9 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Nov after 35.1 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Nov after 35.9 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Nov after 37.2 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Nov after 38.1 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Nov after 37.9 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Nov after 37.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Oct 2018
After · 4 Nov 2018

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 · 435Every 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 17 October 2018 and 28 October 2018: 12 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 13,564 hectares (135.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (13,193 ha, 0.2 %); Cook (401 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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
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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.

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.