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Mareeba fire, 23 October 2021 Mareeba

Out · last detection 30 Oct 2021, 15:49 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2021 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,263 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1621th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 432 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Burnt area
5,263ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
23 Oct 2021 – 29 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Oct
2021
Heat detections
184
in a single hotspot: 297 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

30 Oct 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct29 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930

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
45km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 265 ha in 2016, 3,211 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,155 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,283 ha reached on 24 Oct
    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)
23 Oct 37.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 39
24 Oct 39.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Oct 38.4 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Oct 39.5 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Oct 39.1 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Oct 40.1 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Oct 37.4 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Oct after 38.8 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 53
31 Oct after 40.4 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Nov after 40.0 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
2 Nov after 40.3 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 55
3 Nov after 39.5 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Nov after 39.4 °C 20 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
5 Nov after 39.3 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
6 Nov after 39.2 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
7 Nov after 39.4 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Nov after 39.7 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2021
After · 5 Nov 2021

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 · 184Every 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 23 October 2021 and 29 October 2021: 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 5,263 hectares (52.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (5,283 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.