Mareeba fire, 15 October 2025 Mareeba, Etheridge
The fire started on 15 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 176,591 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
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 11th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 8 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 176,591ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 27days
- 15 Oct 2025 – 10 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 5,652
- in a single hotspot: 395 MW
- Danger at start
- 11
- Low · FWI index
- Energy released
- 56.8GW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 13 Nov.
This area had burned before
58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 60,304 ha in 2016, 12,039 ha in 2017, 4,968 ha in 2019, 25,349 ha in 2020, 9,653 ha in 2021, 13,998 ha in 2022, 6,955 ha in 2023, 16,413 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 101,919 ha that had burned before.
- 39,776 ha Etheridge fire, December 2016 54,053 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 9,990 ha Mareeba fire, November 2020 19,106 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,541 ha Mareeba fire, November 2016 13,916 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,575 ha Mareeba fire, August 2022 8,493 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,421 ha Mareeba fire, November 2021 6,265 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,402 ha Etheridge fire, November 2024 7,815 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,265 ha Mareeba fire, December 2019 14,582 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,002 ha Mareeba fire, December 2017 7,964 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started95,549 ha reached on 15 Oct1.8 %
-
82,004 ha reached on 16 Oct2.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Oct | 32.4 °C | 35 % | 48 km/h | 3.8 mm | Low 11 |
| 16 Oct | 33.6 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Oct | 33.5 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Oct | 35.2 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 19 Oct | 36.6 °C | 15 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 20 Oct | 35.9 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 21 Oct | 36.6 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Oct | 35.7 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 23 Oct | 37.0 °C | 16 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 24 Oct | 38.9 °C | 16 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 Oct | 37.8 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 26 Oct | 37.7 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Oct | 36.7 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Oct | 35.9 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 3.8 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 29 Oct | 34.9 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 3.5 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 30 Oct | 36.0 °C | 24 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Oct | 35.0 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 5.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 1 Nov | 36.3 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Nov | 36.1 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Nov | 34.2 °C | 28 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Nov | 34.5 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 2.3 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 5 Nov | 33.5 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 6 Nov | 36.1 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Nov | 34.3 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 37 |
| 8 Nov | 33.6 °C | 34 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Nov | 31.1 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 26 |
| 10 Nov | 34.5 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 11 Nov after | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Nov after | 35.4 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Nov after | 34.6 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 2.9 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 18 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 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 · 5,652Every 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 15 October 2025 and 10 November 2025: 27 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 176,591 hectares (1,765.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (95,549 ha, 1.8 %); Etheridge (82,004 ha, 2.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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
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.