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Mareeba fire, 2 November 2022 Mareeba

Out · last detection 6 Nov 2022, 03:23 UTC

The fire started on 2 November 2022 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,366 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 731th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 191 in Australia in 2022, of 566.

Burnt area
10,366ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
2 Nov 2022 – 5 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Nov
2022
Heat detections
264
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Nov 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Nov5 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

23456

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
41km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 14 Nov.

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,322 ha in 2016, 201 ha in 2017, 4,072 ha in 2019, 4,280 ha in 2020, 88 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,881 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    10,415 ha reached on 2 Nov
    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)
28 Oct 41.6 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Oct 42.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
30 Oct 40.9 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Oct 40.2 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Nov 39.6 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 52
2 Nov 39.1 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
3 Nov 37.4 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Nov 39.2 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
5 Nov 36.1 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 54
6 Nov after 33.2 °C 37 % 30 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 20
7 Nov after 37.9 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Nov after 38.4 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Nov after 38.9 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Nov after 37.6 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Nov after 38.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Nov after 38.0 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Nov after 39.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Nov after 38.7 °C 31 % 30 km/h 1.2 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Oct 2022
After · 12 Nov 2022

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 5 November 2022 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10176 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
3112345678
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 · 264Every 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 2 November 2022 and 5 November 2022: 4 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 10,366 hectares (103.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (10,415 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.4 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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
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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.