How long did the Mareeba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2024 and 16 September 2024: 11 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 26,931 hectares (269.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mareeba (27,012 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-09-06 → 2024-09-16

Mareeba fire, 6 September 2024 Mareeba

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2024, 04:13 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,931 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 208th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 65 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 26,931ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 6 Sept 2024 – 16 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 6 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 1,393; in a single hotspot: 107 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 10.7GW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Sept 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept16 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

678910111213141516

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

55km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 527 ha in 2019, 20,077 ha in 2020, 1,163 ha in 2021, 1,190 ha in 2022, 232 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 21,552 ha that had burned before.

19,988 ha Mareeba fire, November 2020 81,833 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mareeba where it started

27,012 ha reached on 6 Sept

0.5 %

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)
6 Sept	32.5 °C	27 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Sept	30.5 °C	31 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Sept	32.8 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Sept	34.2 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Sept	33.9 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
11 Sept	33.3 °C	26 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
12 Sept	34.0 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
13 Sept	34.9 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
14 Sept	34.2 °C	28 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
15 Sept	34.4 °C	27 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
16 Sept	29.9 °C	42 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
17 Sept after	29.5 °C	42 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Sept after	31.7 °C	34 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Sept after	30.3 °C	44 %	28 km/h	0.6 mm	High 25
20 Sept after	35.7 °C	30 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Sept after	36.3 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 48
22 Sept after	37.1 °C	7 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
23 Sept after	37.1 °C	10 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
24 Sept after	35.8 °C	19 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
25 Sept after	36.3 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
26 Sept after	35.4 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Sept after	36.6 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Sept after	37.7 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
29 Sept after	37.6 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Sept after	38.0 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
1 Oct after	37.8 °C	18 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Aug 2024

After · 23 Sept 2024

Before After

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 15 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak44 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1064 µg/m³

Optical depth0.99

WHO 15

45678910111213141516171819

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 · 1,393Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mareeba fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 September 2024 and 16 September 2024: 11 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 26,931 hectares (269.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mareeba (27,012 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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.

Where it burned