How long did the Mareeba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 September 2024 and 28 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 6,198 hectares (62.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mareeba (6,213 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.

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 · 2024-09-18 → 2024-09-28

Mareeba fire, 18 September 2024 Mareeba

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2024, 03:47 UTC

The fire started on 18 September 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,198 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1340th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 483 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 6,198ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 18 Sept 2024 – 28 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 18 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 229; in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start: 0; Very low · FWI index
Energy released: 1.6GW; sum of detected power

Play back 28 Sept 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Sept28 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

181920212223242528

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

61km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 4 Oct.

This area had burned before

16% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2016, 543 ha in 2020, 162 ha in 2021, 454 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 997 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

Mareeba where it started

6,213 ha reached on 18 Sept

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)
18 Sept	22.7 °C	74 %	55 km/h	2.2 mm	Very low 0
19 Sept	24.6 °C	73 %	33 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 0
20 Sept	28.7 °C	57 %	20 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 1
21 Sept	28.8 °C	53 %	30 km/h	1.7 mm	Very low 1
22 Sept	29.4 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
23 Sept	27.0 °C	37 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Sept	25.3 °C	56 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
25 Sept	27.0 °C	62 %	40 km/h	0.8 mm	Very low 5
26 Sept	27.6 °C	59 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 5
27 Sept	28.5 °C	56 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
28 Sept	27.9 °C	60 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
29 Sept after	28.4 °C	61 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
30 Sept after	28.7 °C	48 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
1 Oct after	28.0 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
2 Oct after	26.6 °C	59 %	56 km/h	1.1 mm	Low 8
3 Oct after	25.6 °C	57 %	61 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 8
4 Oct after	25.9 °C	61 %	54 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Sept 2024

After · 5 Oct 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 24 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1020 µg/m³

Optical depth0.45

1617181920212223242526272829301

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 · 229Every 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 18 September 2024 and 28 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 6,198 hectares (62.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mareeba (6,213 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned