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Mareeba fire, 14 November 2020 Mareeba

Out · last detection 7 Dec 2020, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 14 November 2020 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 81,833 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 49th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 4 in Australia in 2020, of 320.

Burnt area
81,833ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
14 Nov 2020 – 7 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Nov
2020
Heat detections
4,183
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
32.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Dec 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Nov7 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

14151617181920212223242526272829301234567

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
59km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 8 Dec.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 26 ha in 2016, 10,081 ha in 2017, 522 ha in 2018, 834 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    82,130 ha reached on 14 Nov
    1.5 %

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)
14 Nov 37.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Nov 39.6 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
16 Nov 39.6 °C 12 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
17 Nov 39.1 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
18 Nov 38.3 °C 16 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
19 Nov 37.2 °C 17 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
20 Nov 36.1 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
21 Nov 36.9 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
22 Nov 37.4 °C 19 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
23 Nov 37.7 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 Nov 38.5 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 Nov 32.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
26 Nov 38.1 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
27 Nov 36.2 °C 32 % 53 km/h 4.4 mm High 26
28 Nov 36.1 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
29 Nov 36.5 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Nov 36.8 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
1 Dec 38.5 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Dec 39.4 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Dec 38.8 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Dec 37.1 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
5 Dec 37.9 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
6 Dec 38.6 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Dec 38.3 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Dec after 37.8 °C 33 % 33 km/h 3.7 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Nov 2020
After · 14 Dec 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 · 4,183Every 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 14 November 2020 and 7 December 2020: 24 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 81,833 hectares (818.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (82,130 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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.

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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.