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Mareeba fire, 9 October 2020 Mareeba

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2020, 03:22 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2020 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,115 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 273th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 32 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
23,115ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
9 Oct 2020 – 15 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Oct
2020
Heat detections
902
in a single hotspot: 218 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
19.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Oct 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct15 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

9101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
49km/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

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,971 ha in 2016, 2,252 ha in 2017, 9,461 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,774 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    23,236 ha reached on 9 Oct
    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)
8 Oct 36.8 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
9 Oct 37.9 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Oct 38.8 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
11 Oct 37.2 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
12 Oct 38.1 °C 19 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
13 Oct 38.2 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
14 Oct 36.2 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Oct 36.4 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Oct after 35.4 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Oct after 35.9 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Oct after 36.6 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Oct after 37.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Oct after 39.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Oct after 38.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Oct after 38.0 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Oct after 36.5 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 50
24 Oct after 35.8 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 47
25 Oct after 38.1 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2020
After · 22 Oct 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 · 902Every 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 9 October 2020 and 15 October 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 23,115 hectares (231.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (23,236 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.