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Mareeba fire, 31 October 2023 Mareeba

Out · last detection 11 Nov 2023, 15:35 UTC

The fire started on 31 October 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,561 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 636th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 479 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mareeba · 2020Mareeba · 2020Tablelands · 2018Mareeba · 2019

Burnt area
11,561ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
31 Oct 2023 – 11 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
31 Oct
2023
Heat detections
443
in a single hotspot: 253 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
478MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Oct11 Nov
11 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

31 Oct 2023 · 455 MW · 63 1 Nov 2023 · 3,376 MW · 84 2 Nov 2023 · 92 MW · 13 3 Nov 2023 · 235 MW · 84 4 Nov 2023 · 201 MW · 35 5 Nov 2023 · 267 MW · 57 6 Nov 2023 · 160 MW · 12 7 Nov 2023 · 753 MW · 64 8 Nov 2023 · 140 MW · 19 9 Nov 2023 · 46 MW · 6 10 Nov 2023 · 11 MW · 5 11 Nov 2023 · 1 MW · 1
31 Oct 1 Nov 2 Nov 4 Nov 6 Nov 8 Nov 10 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
51km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 21 Nov.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,355 ha in 2016, 2,914 ha in 2017, 229 ha in 2018, 5,647 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,383 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (116 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    11,637 ha reached on 31 Oct
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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)
31 Oct 29.6 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Nov 32.8 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Nov 32.7 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Nov 30.6 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Nov 30.2 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Nov 32.0 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Nov 29.5 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Nov 28.3 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.8 mm High 23
8 Nov 29.2 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
9 Nov 29.7 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Nov 28.8 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
11 Nov 29.8 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Nov after 28.4 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Nov after 29.5 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Nov after 30.3 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Nov after 31.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Nov after 33.2 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Nov after 34.8 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Nov after 32.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Nov after 29.7 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Nov after 30.6 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Nov after 30.0 °C 46 % 39 km/h 3.8 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Oct 2023
After · 18 Nov 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 2 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 55 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak55 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1079 µg/m³
Optical depth1.23
30311234567891011121314
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 · 443Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 October 2023 to 11 November 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 November 2023 to 11 November 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,561 hectares (115.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (11,637 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 1 November 2023 → 31 October 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 November 2023 to 11 November 2023. 443 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.