Mareeba fire, 19 November 2023 Mareeba
The fire started on 19 November 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,676 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1049th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 769 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
- Burnt area
- 7,676ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 19 Nov 2023 – 21 Nov 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 19 Nov
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 207
- in a single hotspot: 50 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 2.0GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 22 Nov.
This area had burned before
84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 98 ha in 2016, 1,894 ha in 2017, 3,908 ha in 2019, 4,426 ha in 2021, 110 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,460 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started7,728 ha reached on 19 Nov0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Nov | 36.9 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 20 Nov | 37.8 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 21 Nov | 38.0 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Nov after | 38.4 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 31 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 21 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 207Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 30,768 haMareeba15 December 2019 · 11 days · 4 km away
- 44,865 haMareeba16 October 2021 · 6 days · 17 km away
- 53,253 haMareeba2 November 2024 · 12 days · 19 km away
- 93,026 haMareeba 8 October 2026 · 16 days · 36 km away
- 40,806 haMareeba25 October 2016 · 11 days · 40 km away
- 35,623 haMareeba28 August 2019 · 14 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mareeba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 November 2023 and 21 November 2023: 3 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 7,676 hectares (76.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (7,728 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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
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.