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Mareeba fire, 15 December 2019 Mareeba

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2019, 16:00 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,858 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 878th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 427 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mareeba · 2017Mareeba · 2018Mareeba · 2020Mareeba · 2019

Burnt area
8,858ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
15 Dec 2019 – 22 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
301
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
309MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2019 · 219 MW · 22 16 Dec 2019 · 597 MW · 17 17 Dec 2019 · 187 MW · 27 18 Dec 2019 · 536 MW · 65 19 Dec 2019 · 672 MW · 114 20 Dec 2019 · 170 MW · 35 21 Dec 2019 · 70 MW · 10 22 Dec 2019 · 20 MW · 8
15 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,640 ha in 2016, 684 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (89 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    8,918 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
15 Dec 39.8 °C 26 % 46 km/h 18.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Dec 36.6 °C 38 % 28 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 18
17 Dec 37.6 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Dec 37.7 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Dec 38.0 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Dec 38.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 38.0 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Dec 37.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Dec after 38.3 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
24 Dec after 39.8 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Dec after 40.1 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
26 Dec after 37.3 °C 36 % 38 km/h 27.7 mm Low 9
27 Dec after 34.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
28 Dec after 35.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
29 Dec after 34.7 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Dec after 35.0 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
31 Dec after 36.4 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
1 Jan after 37.7 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.9 mm High 30
2 Jan after 38.8 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
3 Jan after 36.1 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jan after 36.0 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Jan after 39.3 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Jan after 38.2 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Jan after 37.6 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2019
After · 29 Dec 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 · 301Every 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 15 December 2019 and 22 December 2019: 8 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 8,858 hectares (88.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (8,918 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 301 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.