Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Mareeba fire, 13 October 2025 Mareeba, Cook

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2025, 03:39 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,026 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 333th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 220 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
19,026ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
13 Oct 2025 – 23 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
13 Oct
2025
Heat detections
744
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
5.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct23 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1314151617181920212223

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
44km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 57 ha in 2016, 8,183 ha in 2017, 5,763 ha in 2019, 2,876 ha in 2020, 8,855 ha in 2022, 161 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 15,280 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    17,051 ha reached on 13 Oct
    0.3 %
  2. Cook
    2,015 ha reached on 13 Oct
    0.0 %

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)
13 Oct 39.4 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Oct 36.1 °C 41 % 44 km/h 2.1 mm High 25
15 Oct 37.3 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Oct 37.2 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Oct 37.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Oct 38.5 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Oct 40.5 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
20 Oct 38.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
21 Oct 37.7 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Oct 37.4 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Oct 38.0 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Oct after 37.8 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Oct after 37.9 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Oct after 39.2 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Oct after 38.9 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Oct after 39.1 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
29 Oct after 38.8 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
30 Oct after 38.6 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 47
31 Oct after 37.4 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Nov after 39.7 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Nov after 39.8 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2025
After · 30 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 18 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 85 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak85 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1087 µg/m³
Optical depth1.02
11121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 744Every 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 13 October 2025 and 23 October 2025: 11 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 19,026 hectares (190.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (17,051 ha, 0.3 %); Cook (2,015 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.