How long did the Mareeba fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 September 2024 and 11 October 2024: 15 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 8,035 hectares (80.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mareeba (8,061 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

AU · Australia · 2024-09-27 → 2024-10-11

Mareeba fire, 27 September 2024 Mareeba

Out · last detection 12 Oct 2024, 04:24 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,035 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 999th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 343 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Burnt area: 8,035ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 27 Sept 2024 – 11 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 27 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 290; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Energy released: 1.8GW; sum of detected power

Play back 12 Oct 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

282930123456789101112

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

62km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 231 ha in 2018, 5,630 ha in 2019, 752 ha in 2022, 592 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,311 ha that had burned before.

5,588 ha Mareeba fire, November 2019 27,515 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Mareeba where it started

8,061 ha reached on 28 Sept

0.2 %

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)
27 Sept	33.9 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
28 Sept	32.3 °C	42 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Sept	33.5 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Sept	33.7 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Oct	32.4 °C	30 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Oct	30.5 °C	42 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Oct	29.3 °C	41 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Oct	31.1 °C	36 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Oct	30.4 °C	35 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Oct	30.7 °C	37 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Oct	31.9 °C	33 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Oct	33.1 °C	42 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Oct	34.5 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Oct	33.1 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
11 Oct	31.6 °C	41 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Oct after	32.0 °C	33 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Oct after	30.2 °C	40 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Oct after	32.3 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Oct after	31.2 °C	45 %	49 km/h	0.6 mm	High 29
16 Oct after	32.4 °C	40 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Oct after	32.9 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Oct after	33.9 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Oct after	33.6 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Oct after	35.7 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Oct after	33.7 °C	34 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Oct after	32.2 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Sept 2024

After · 18 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 6 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1021 µg/m³

Optical depth0.49

2526272829301234567891011121314

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 · 290Every 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 27 September 2024 and 11 October 2024: 15 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 8,035 hectares (80.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mareeba (8,061 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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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What really happened?

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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