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Mareeba fire, 4 November 2020 Mareeba

Out · last detection 10 Nov 2020, 03:35 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2020 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1355th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 239 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
6,137ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
4 Nov 2020 – 9 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Nov
2020
Heat detections
269
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Nov 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov9 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

45678910

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
50km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 26 Nov.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,661 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    6,175 ha reached on 4 Nov
    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)
4 Nov 29.7 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Nov 34.2 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Nov 34.3 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Nov 32.1 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
8 Nov 30.8 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Nov 28.8 °C 42 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
10 Nov after 27.7 °C 45 % 48 km/h 0.5 mm High 31
11 Nov after 28.3 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Nov after 28.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Nov after 31.6 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Nov after 32.3 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
15 Nov after 33.0 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Nov after 32.7 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Nov after 31.1 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Nov after 30.2 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Nov after 29.6 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Nov after 28.8 °C 34 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Nov after 28.7 °C 39 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Nov after 29.4 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Nov after 31.3 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Nov after 33.9 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Nov after 30.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.7 mm High 32
26 Nov after 32.5 °C 31 % 41 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2020
After · 16 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 · 269Every 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 4 November 2020 and 9 November 2020: 6 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 6,137 hectares (61.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (6,175 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
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.