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Mareeba fire, 15 December 2019 Mareeba

Out · last detection 26 Dec 2019, 03:34 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 30,768 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 178th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 97 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
30,768ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2019
Heat detections
1,108
in a single hotspot: 243 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
12.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

151617181920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
51km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 1 Jan.

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6 ha in 2016, 9,624 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    30,967 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.6 %

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)
11 Dec 40.9 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Dec 41.0 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Dec 42.4 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
14 Dec 41.3 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Dec 41.3 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 65
16 Dec 42.1 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 62
17 Dec 41.8 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
18 Dec 39.8 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Dec 40.8 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
20 Dec 39.9 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
21 Dec 40.1 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
22 Dec 40.0 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Dec 40.5 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Dec 41.5 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Dec 41.6 °C 20 % 49 km/h 1.3 mm Extreme 52
26 Dec after 37.9 °C 38 % 50 km/h 5.5 mm High 24
27 Dec after 37.2 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm High 35
28 Dec after 38.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Dec after 38.8 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 38
30 Dec after 38.5 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Dec after 38.0 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jan after 38.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 5.1 mm Moderate 16

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 · 1,108Every 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 30,768 hectares (307.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (30,967 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.