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Mareeba fire, October 2023 Mareeba

Out · last detection 21 Oct 2023, 15:29 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 38,261 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 139th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 130 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
38,261ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
5 Oct 2023 – 20 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Oct
2023
Heat detections
1,477
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
14.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Oct 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct20 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

56789101112131415161718192021

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
64km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 188 ha in 2016, 333 ha in 2017, 8,980 ha in 2018, 6,731 ha in 2019, 338 ha in 2020, 4,027 ha in 2021, 1,107 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,611 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    38,403 ha reached on 5 Oct
    0.7 %

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 Oct 30.8 °C 38 % 47 km/h 1.5 mm High 28
6 Oct 30.9 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Oct 29.4 °C 37 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Oct 28.9 °C 32 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Oct 26.6 °C 44 % 62 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
10 Oct 30.6 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Oct 30.4 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 29.0 °C 36 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Oct 32.1 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Oct 31.9 °C 18 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Oct 30.7 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Oct 31.3 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Oct 34.8 °C 14 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Oct 29.8 °C 35 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Oct 29.9 °C 35 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Oct 31.6 °C 29 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Oct after 31.7 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
22 Oct after 32.2 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Oct after 34.2 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Oct after 33.7 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Oct after 32.5 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Oct after 36.3 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Oct after 32.9 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Oct after 30.9 °C 39 % 61 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 46
29 Oct after 27.3 °C 45 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Oct after 32.6 °C 24 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
31 Oct after 32.1 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Nov after 32.9 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Nov after 32.2 °C 33 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Nov after 30.5 °C 39 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Nov after 30.0 °C 40 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Nov after 32.6 °C 29 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Nov after 31.0 °C 36 % 58 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Sept 2023
After · 27 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 16 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 48 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak48 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1069 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
34567891011121314151617181920212223
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 · 1,477Every 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 5 October 2023 and 20 October 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 38,261 hectares (382.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (38,403 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.