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Mareeba fire, September 2025 Cook, Mareeba

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2025, 16:16 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 78,277 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 56th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 35 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
78,277ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
25 Sept 2025 – 13 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
25 Sept
2025
Heat detections
2,481
in a single hotspot: 334 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
22.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept13 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

25262728293012345678910111213

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
50km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,252 ha in 2016, 2,244 ha in 2017, 14,360 ha in 2018, 13,715 ha in 2019, 10,334 ha in 2020, 22,830 ha in 2021, 568 ha in 2022, 44,583 ha in 2023, 3,730 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 62,304 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cook
    45,534 ha reached on 29 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Mareeba where it started
    33,589 ha reached on 25 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
25 Sept 28.7 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Sept 28.5 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Sept 30.9 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Sept 32.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Sept 34.2 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Sept 34.6 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Oct 35.1 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct 35.8 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Oct 35.8 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct 34.1 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Oct 31.2 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
6 Oct 31.0 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 28.0 °C 49 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
8 Oct 32.4 °C 40 % 30 km/h 3.7 mm Low 8
9 Oct 32.7 °C 42 % 28 km/h 2.1 mm Low 10
10 Oct 33.1 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
11 Oct 32.0 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Oct 32.6 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Oct 33.0 °C 38 % 31 km/h 4.2 mm Low 7
14 Oct after 31.1 °C 49 % 44 km/h 15.2 mm Very low 4
15 Oct after 31.1 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
16 Oct after 31.9 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
17 Oct after 31.3 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Oct after 33.2 °C 22 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Oct after 35.2 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Oct after 33.7 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Oct after 33.2 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Oct after 35.4 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Oct after 35.5 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Oct after 37.2 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Oct after 34.5 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Oct after 34.5 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Oct after 36.0 °C 18 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Oct after 35.6 °C 25 % 56 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 40
29 Oct after 32.5 °C 37 % 37 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Sept 2025
After · 20 Oct 2025

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 1 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 93 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak93 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1095 µg/m³
Optical depth0.53
232425262728293012345678910111213141516
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 · 2,481Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mareeba fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 September 2025 and 13 October 2025: 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 78,277 hectares (782.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cook (45,534 ha, 0.4 %); Mareeba (33,589 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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
What do you think is wrong?

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.