Mareeba fire, 26 October 2024 Mareeba
The fire started on 26 October 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 53,253 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 91th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 27 in Australia in 2024, of 636.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 53,253ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 21days
- 26 Oct 2024 – 15 Nov 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 26 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 1,650
- in a single hotspot: 399 MW
- Danger at start
- 62
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 16 Nov.
This area had burned before
76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,491 ha in 2016, 10,704 ha in 2017, 27,098 ha in 2019, 4,596 ha in 2020, 15,009 ha in 2021, 1,803 ha in 2022, 2,838 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 40,656 ha that had burned before.
- 11,059 ha Mareeba fire, December 2019 30,768 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,770 ha Mareeba fire, August 2019 35,623 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,544 ha Mareeba fire, December 2017 5,945 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,007 ha Mareeba fire, October 2021 12,393 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,604 ha Mareeba fire, September 2022 16,011 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 986 ha Mareeba fire, December 2023 5,299 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 272 ha Mareeba fire, October 2021 44,865 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 180 ha Mareeba fire, November 2023 7,676 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started53,571 ha reached on 26 Oct1.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Oct | 38.9 °C | 20 % | 44 km/h | 0.4 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 27 Oct | 39.3 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Oct | 39.5 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 29 Oct | 39.1 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Oct | 38.0 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 31 Oct | 37.3 °C | 14 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 1 Nov | 33.7 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 3.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 2 Nov | 37.2 °C | 24 % | 20 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Nov | 39.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Nov | 39.3 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Nov | 39.7 °C | 10 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 6 Nov | 38.8 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Nov | 38.8 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Nov | 39.1 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 9 Nov | 39.5 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 10 Nov | 39.1 °C | 23 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 11 Nov | 39.7 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 12 Nov | 39.3 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 13 Nov | 39.2 °C | 30 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 14 Nov | 35.8 °C | 36 % | 28 km/h | 2.8 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 15 Nov | 38.6 °C | 31 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 41 |
| 16 Nov after | 39.8 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 1.6 mm | Very high 40 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 5 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 112 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 1,650Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mareeba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 October 2024 to 15 November 2024 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2024 to 13 November 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 53,253 hectares (532.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (53,571 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 13 November 2024 → 15 November 2024.
- Start date: 2 November 2024 → 26 October 2024.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 November 2024 to 13 November 2024. 1,650 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.