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Mareeba fire, 4 June 2024 Mareeba

Out · last detection 24 Jun 2024, 14:57 UTC

The fire started on 4 June 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 147th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 45 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area
36,633ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
4 Jun 2024 – 24 Jun 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Jun
2024
Heat detections
1,607
in a single hotspot: 98 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Energy released
8.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Jun 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jun24 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
59km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,119 ha in 2017, 811 ha in 2021, 103 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    36,796 ha reached on 4 Jun
    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)
28 May 26.7 °C 47 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 May 25.9 °C 51 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 May 26.5 °C 47 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 May 27.4 °C 48 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Jun 28.5 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
2 Jun 27.7 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Jun 27.2 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Jun 26.7 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Jun 25.1 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Jun 25.1 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Jun 25.1 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Jun 25.0 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Jun 25.3 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jun 25.0 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jun 25.9 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Jun 27.8 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jun 29.2 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Jun 26.0 °C 38 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Jun 27.0 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Jun 28.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Jun 26.9 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jun 25.4 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Jun 25.2 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Jun 24.5 °C 45 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jun 25.7 °C 43 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jun 25.2 °C 49 % 46 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
23 Jun 26.3 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Jun 27.7 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jun after 27.0 °C 54 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Jun after 26.2 °C 61 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jun after 27.0 °C 64 % 43 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 12
28 Jun after 27.4 °C 54 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Jun after 26.8 °C 51 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Jun after 27.0 °C 45 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Jul after 27.0 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Jul after 26.2 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Jul after 27.0 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Jul after 24.8 °C 51 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jul after 23.9 °C 54 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jul after 24.3 °C 51 % 83 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jul after 25.2 °C 45 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Jul after 26.4 °C 47 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Jul after 27.4 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Jul after 27.6 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 May 2024
After · 1 Jul 2024

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 17 June 2024 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1041 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
23456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 1,607Every 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 4 June 2024 and 24 June 2024: 21 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 36,633 hectares (366.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (36,796 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.