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Mareeba fire, 15 December 2019 Mareeba

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2019, 03:53 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 272th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 142 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
23,133ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
876
in a single hotspot: 231 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
10.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819202122232425

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
46km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.4 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 762 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    23,308 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.4 %

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)
15 Dec 36.9 °C 25 % 45 km/h 7.8 mm Moderate 18
16 Dec 35.3 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Dec 37.1 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Dec 34.2 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Dec 33.6 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Dec 34.6 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Dec 33.8 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Dec 34.5 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Dec 34.3 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Dec 37.3 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Dec 37.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Dec after 34.7 °C 39 % 38 km/h 14.4 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2019
After · 1 Jan 2020

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 · 876Every 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 25 December 2019: 11 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 23,133 hectares (231.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (23,308 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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
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.