Mareeba fire, 3 November 2024 Mareeba
The fire started on 3 November 2024 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 119,662 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
It is the 26th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 7 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
- Burnt area
- 119,662ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 3 Nov 2024 – 21 Nov 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 3 Nov
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 4,340
- in a single hotspot: 397 MW
- Danger at start
- 58
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 33.7GW
- sum of detected power
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 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.1 mm on 22 Nov.
This area had burned before
65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,028 ha in 2016, 5,959 ha in 2017, 3,847 ha in 2019, 53,700 ha in 2020, 8,009 ha in 2021, 29,088 ha in 2022, 2,269 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 77,622 ha that had burned before.
- 40,297 ha Mareeba fire, November 2020 61,402 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,594 ha Mareeba fire, November 2022 12,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,432 ha Mareeba fire, November 2022 8,267 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,670 ha Mareeba fire, September 2019 133,164 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 648 ha Mareeba fire, October 2021 10,132 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 430 ha Mareeba fire, October 2021 9,324 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 58 ha Mareeba fire, November 2016 6,492 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started120,104 ha reached on 7 Nov2.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Nov | 38.4 °C | 18 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 4 Nov | 38.4 °C | 15 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 5 Nov | 38.9 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 6 Nov | 37.8 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 7 Nov | 36.5 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 8 Nov | 37.8 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 9 Nov | 39.7 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 10 Nov | 39.2 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 11 Nov | 39.1 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 12 Nov | 39.3 °C | 18 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 13 Nov | 39.7 °C | 23 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 14 Nov | 37.1 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Nov | 39.7 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 1.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Nov | 38.0 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 17 Nov | 40.6 °C | 17 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 18 Nov | 38.8 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Nov | 38.8 °C | 17 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 20 Nov | 38.7 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 4.1 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Nov | 37.4 °C | 30 % | 48 km/h | 32.6 mm | Low 11 |
| 22 Nov after | 36.4 °C | 35 % | 49 km/h | 10.1 mm | Low 9 |
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 14 November 2024 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 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 · 4,340Every 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?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 November 2024 and 21 November 2024: 19 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 119,662 hectares (1,196.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (120,104 ha, 2.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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
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
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.