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Mareeba fire, 29 October 2020 Mareeba

Out · last detection 9 Nov 2020, 03:54 UTC

The fire started on 29 October 2020 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 51,390 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 96th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 13 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
51,390ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
29 Oct 2020 – 8 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
29 Oct
2020
Heat detections
1,429
in a single hotspot: 215 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
14.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Nov 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Oct8 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

293031123456789

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
56km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,738 ha in 2016, 2,024 ha in 2018, 10,100 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 27,239 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    51,568 ha reached on 29 Oct
    1.0 %

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)
22 Oct 37.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 57
23 Oct 36.5 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
24 Oct 36.0 °C 26 % 34 km/h 3.0 mm High 30
25 Oct 35.7 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
26 Oct 36.2 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 37
27 Oct 31.7 °C 35 % 34 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 17
28 Oct 35.8 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Oct 38.7 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Oct 38.2 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Oct 39.1 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
1 Nov 39.9 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
2 Nov 40.2 °C 10 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
3 Nov 40.0 °C 14 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
4 Nov 38.7 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
5 Nov 39.5 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Nov 39.4 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Nov 39.3 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 68
8 Nov 40.0 °C 17 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
9 Nov after 39.4 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Nov after 37.5 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
11 Nov after 37.7 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Nov after 36.8 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Nov after 37.3 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
14 Nov after 39.0 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Nov after 40.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Nov after 40.9 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
17 Nov after 40.1 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
18 Nov after 39.5 °C 15 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
19 Nov after 39.0 °C 16 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Oct 2020
After · 15 Nov 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 · 1,429Every 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 29 October 2020 and 8 November 2020: 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 51,390 hectares (513.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (51,568 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, class Very 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.