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Mareeba fire, November 2019 Mareeba

Out · last detection 23 Nov 2019, 03:54 UTC

The fire started on 8 November 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,515 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 194th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 109 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
27,515ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
8 Nov 2019 – 23 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Nov
2019
Heat detections
1,101
in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Energy released
9.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Nov 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Nov23 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

891011121314151617181920212223

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
53km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 420 ha in 2017, 923 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    27,599 ha reached on 8 Nov
    0.5 %

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)
8 Nov 33.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Nov 35.6 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Nov 33.4 °C 19 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Nov 31.1 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Nov 30.6 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Nov 33.6 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Nov 34.7 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Nov 31.3 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Nov 31.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Nov 33.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Nov 34.2 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Nov 32.9 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Nov 32.4 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Nov 32.1 °C 34 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Nov 30.2 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Nov 31.3 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Nov after 32.3 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Nov after 31.0 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Nov after 32.8 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
27 Nov after 32.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Nov after 31.0 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Nov after 31.1 °C 40 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Nov after 32.4 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Dec after 33.4 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Dec after 34.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Dec after 36.7 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Nov 2019
After · 30 Nov 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 · 1,101Every 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 8 November 2019 and 23 November 2019: 16 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 27,515 hectares (275.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (27,599 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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
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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.