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Mareeba fire, 28 August 2019 Mareeba

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2019, 16:00 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,230 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1634th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 762 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
5,230ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
28 Aug 2019 – 1 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
28 Aug
2019
Heat detections
201
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
1.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug1 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

282930311

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
38km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 910 ha in 2016, 1,801 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,562 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,259 ha reached on 28 Aug
    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)
28 Aug 32.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
29 Aug 31.8 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Aug 32.3 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Aug 32.1 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept 33.2 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Sept after 33.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Sept after 34.4 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Sept after 34.7 °C 4 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
5 Sept after 33.1 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Sept after 33.3 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
7 Sept after 34.2 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Sept after 34.0 °C 6 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
9 Sept after 32.6 °C 5 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
10 Sept after 32.1 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
11 Sept after 31.9 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2019
After · 8 Sept 2019

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 · 201Every 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 28 August 2019 and 1 September 2019: 5 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 5,230 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (5,259 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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.