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Mareeba fire, January 2020 Mareeba

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2020, 04:37 UTC

The fire started on 8 January 2020 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,068 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1703th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 312 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
5,068ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
8 Jan 2020 – 14 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
8 Jan
2020
Heat detections
152
in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
808MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Jan 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jan14 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

910111213

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
46km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 33.8 mm on 16 Jan.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 687 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,095 ha reached on 9 Jan
    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)
8 Jan 28.2 °C 54 % 46 km/h 6.0 mm Very low 2
9 Jan 29.4 °C 52 % 46 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 5
10 Jan 30.0 °C 44 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
11 Jan 29.5 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.9 mm Low 8
12 Jan 32.9 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Jan 30.9 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
14 Jan 29.6 °C 51 % 35 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 3
15 Jan after 30.3 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
16 Jan after 31.6 °C 42 % 30 km/h 33.8 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jan 2020
After · 21 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 · 152Every 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 January 2020 and 14 January 2020: 7 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 5,068 hectares (50.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (5,095 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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.