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Mareeba fire, 5 December 2023 Mareeba

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2023, 03:42 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2023 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,164 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1345th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 989 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Burnt area
6,164ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
5 Dec 2023 – 10 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Dec
2023
Heat detections
179
in a single hotspot: 242 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
3.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Dec 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec10 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

5678910

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
40km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 12 Dec.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,916 ha in 2016, 40 ha in 2017, 2,703 ha in 2019, 2,541 ha in 2020, 680 ha in 2021, 14 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,482 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    6,194 ha reached on 2 Dec
    0.1 %

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)
2 Dec 34.3 °C 54 % 23 km/h 11.8 mm Very low 1
3 Dec 35.8 °C 51 % 22 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 4
4 Dec 37.1 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
5 Dec 38.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
6 Dec 37.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 Dec 37.2 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
8 Dec 36.5 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
9 Dec 37.7 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Dec 38.3 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Dec after 36.8 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
12 Dec after 38.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2023
After · 17 Dec 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 11 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1035 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
345678910111213
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 · 179Every 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 December 2023 and 10 December 2023: 6 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 6,164 hectares (61.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (6,194 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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
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.