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Mareeba fire, May 2023 Mareeba, Cook

Out · last detection 20 Jun 2023, 15:36 UTC

The fire started on 24 May 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,833 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 689th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 507 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
10,833ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
24 May 2023 – 19 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
24 May
2023
Heat detections
363
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Jun 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 May19 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

24252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
55km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,486 ha in 2018, 650 ha in 2020, 529 ha in 2021, 359 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,534 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    9,223 ha reached on 24 May
    0.2 %
  2. Cook
    1,653 ha reached on 1 Jun
    0.0 %

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)
24 May 28.4 °C 44 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 May 29.1 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 May 30.5 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 May 30.5 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 May 30.4 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 May 29.5 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 May 29.4 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 May 30.7 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jun 30.0 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Jun 29.9 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Jun 32.1 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Jun 28.9 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
5 Jun 30.8 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
6 Jun 31.9 °C 46 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jun 31.5 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jun 31.7 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jun 30.6 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jun 29.9 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jun 30.1 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jun 31.3 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jun 30.9 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jun 31.2 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jun 30.1 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Jun 30.4 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Jun 29.6 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Jun 28.2 °C 44 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Jun 29.5 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jun after 31.1 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Jun after 31.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jun after 30.3 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jun after 31.3 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Jun after 31.8 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Jun after 31.8 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jun after 32.1 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Jun after 31.4 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jun after 31.6 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Jun after 32.0 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jun after 30.5 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Jul after 30.5 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 May 2023
After · 26 Jun 2023

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 18 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1049 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
2223242526272829303112345678910111213141516171819202122
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 · 363Every 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 24 May 2023 and 19 June 2023: 27 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 10,833 hectares (108.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (9,223 ha, 0.2 %); Cook (1,653 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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
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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.