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Mareeba fire, 15 October 2025 Mareeba

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2025, 04:41 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,367 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 234th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 148 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
25,367ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
15 Oct 2025 – 24 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Oct
2025
Heat detections
860
in a single hotspot: 184 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
17.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct24 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1516171819202122232425

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
54km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 466 ha in 2017, 53 ha in 2018, 908 ha in 2019, 15,344 ha in 2020, 676 ha in 2023, 684 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,685 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    25,537 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.5 %

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 31.2 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Oct 32.1 °C 35 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Oct 31.0 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Oct 33.4 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Oct 34.3 °C 19 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Oct 33.0 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Oct 34.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Oct 35.6 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Oct 36.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Oct 36.5 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Oct after 36.0 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
26 Oct after 36.0 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Oct after 36.1 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Oct after 34.9 °C 32 % 32 km/h 3.3 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2025
After · 31 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 23 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.60
131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 860Every 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 15 October 2025 and 24 October 2025: 10 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 25,367 hectares (253.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (25,537 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 54 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.