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Mareeba fire, 11 September 2023 Mareeba, Cook

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2023, 14:58 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,131 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 412th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 344 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
16,131ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
11 Sept 2023 – 26 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
11 Sept
2023
Heat detections
536
in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Sept 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept26 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

11121314151617181920212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
69km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 887 ha in 2016, 546 ha in 2017, 3,415 ha in 2018, 4,482 ha in 2019, 9,977 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,530 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    15,202 ha reached on 11 Sept
    0.3 %
  2. Cook
    973 ha reached on 16 Sept
    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)
5 Sept 30.8 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept 30.1 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Sept 30.3 °C 52 % 41 km/h 8.1 mm Low 6
8 Sept 30.4 °C 59 % 37 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 4
9 Sept 29.4 °C 50 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
10 Sept 28.7 °C 45 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
11 Sept 26.9 °C 46 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
12 Sept 27.1 °C 39 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Sept 25.9 °C 46 % 69 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
14 Sept 26.8 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Sept 25.9 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Sept 26.7 °C 41 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Sept 27.5 °C 39 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Sept 27.1 °C 53 % 53 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
19 Sept 29.1 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Sept 32.0 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Sept 33.5 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Sept 33.6 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 28.5 °C 39 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 27.7 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Sept 27.6 °C 45 % 56 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
26 Sept 29.0 °C 37 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept after 29.4 °C 31 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Sept after 28.6 °C 38 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Sept after 28.7 °C 39 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Sept after 29.2 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Oct after 30.3 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
2 Oct after 31.5 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Oct after 32.6 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Oct after 34.4 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct after 34.2 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct after 33.7 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Oct after 31.1 °C 36 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Oct after 29.7 °C 31 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Oct after 27.7 °C 47 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2023
After · 3 Oct 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 24 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.23
91011121314151617181920212223242526272829
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 · 536Every 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 11 September 2023 and 26 September 2023: 16 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 16,131 hectares (161.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (15,202 ha, 0.3 %); Cook (973 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 69 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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
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.