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Mareeba fire, 4 September 2019 Mareeba, Tablelands, Etheridge

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2019, 03:41 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 592th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 311 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
12,364ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
4 Sept 2019 – 10 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
4 Sept
2019
Heat detections
557
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

45678910

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
55km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,420 ha in 2016, 4,028 ha in 2017, 18 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    9,622 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Tablelands
    1,839 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.2 %
  3. Etheridge
    1,022 ha reached on 6 Sept
    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)
28 Aug 27.5 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Aug 27.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Aug 27.3 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Aug 28.0 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Sept 27.5 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Sept 26.2 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 27.3 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 28.4 °C 5 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Sept 28.7 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Sept 29.4 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Sept 30.4 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Sept 27.5 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Sept 26.5 °C 7 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Sept 26.1 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Sept after 23.2 °C 28 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept after 23.5 °C 34 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept after 24.9 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept after 26.9 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Sept after 26.2 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Sept after 26.1 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Sept after 29.3 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept after 30.5 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Sept after 29.3 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Sept after 26.9 °C 31 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2019
After · 17 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 · 557Every 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 September 2019 and 10 September 2019: 7 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 12,364 hectares (123.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Mareeba (9,622 ha, 0.2 %); Tablelands (1,839 ha, 0.2 %); Etheridge (1,022 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.

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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.