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Mareeba fire, 16 December 2019 Mareeba

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

The fire started on 16 December 2019 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,391 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1093th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 524 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Burnt area
7,391ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
16 Dec 2019 – 25 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
16 Dec
2019
Heat detections
286
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
2.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Dec 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Dec25 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

16171819202122232425

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
49km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.4 mm on 26 Dec.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 390 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    7,445 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.1 %

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 40.6 °C 23 % 42 km/h 4.8 mm High 34
16 Dec 41.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Dec 40.7 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Dec 39.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Dec 40.2 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Dec 39.5 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Dec 39.4 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Dec 39.4 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Dec 40.2 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Dec 40.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Dec 41.6 °C 17 % 45 km/h 1.2 mm Very high 45
26 Dec after 37.2 °C 35 % 40 km/h 25.4 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 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 · 286Every 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 16 December 2019 and 25 December 2019: 10 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 7,391 hectares (73.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (7,445 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.