How long did the Mareeba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 September 2022 and 30 September 2022: 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 10,419 hectares (104.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mareeba (10,465 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.

AU · Australia · 2022-09-25 → 2022-09-30

Mareeba fire, 25 September 2022 Mareeba

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2022, 04:39 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2022 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,419 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 724th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 189 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area: 10,419ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 25 Sept 2022 – 30 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 25 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 258; in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Energy released: 1.4GW; sum of detected power

Play back 1 Oct 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept30 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

25262729301

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

45km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,980 ha in 2017, 9 ha in 2019, 8,807 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,147 ha that had burned before.

8,257 ha Mareeba fire, November 2020 81,833 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mareeba where it started

10,465 ha reached on 25 Sept

0.2 %

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)
25 Sept	37.4 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
26 Sept	37.4 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
27 Sept	37.3 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
28 Sept	35.1 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 40
29 Sept	35.4 °C	26 %	31 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 39
30 Sept	36.5 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
1 Oct after	35.8 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
2 Oct after	35.7 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
3 Oct after	36.8 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
4 Oct after	36.1 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
5 Oct after	34.3 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Oct after	37.2 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Oct after	37.5 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
8 Oct after	37.9 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Oct after	37.9 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 46
10 Oct after	37.6 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
11 Oct after	38.8 °C	16 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Sept 2022

After · 7 Oct 2022

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 35 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak35 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM10280 µg/m³

Optical depth0.52

WHO 15

2324252627282930123

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 258Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mareeba fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 September 2022 and 30 September 2022: 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 10,419 hectares (104.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mareeba (10,465 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned