Mareeba fire, 15 October 2025 Mareeba
The fire started on 15 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 60,564 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 77th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 53 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 60,564ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 15 Oct 2025 – 28 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 2,654
- in a single hotspot: 163 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Energy released
- 25.5GW
- 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: 22.8 mm on 29 Oct.
This area had burned before
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22,033 ha in 2016, 655 ha in 2017, 564 ha in 2018, 1,040 ha in 2019, 11,115 ha in 2020, 20,837 ha in 2021, 358 ha in 2022, 1,925 ha in 2023, 2,940 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 42,271 ha that had burned before.
- 21,428 ha Mareeba fire, November 2016 25,210 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 19,806 ha Mareeba fire, September 2021 25,499 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,051 ha Mareeba fire, January 2020 5,068 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,287 ha Mareeba fire, June 2024 36,633 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 257 ha Mareeba fire, November 2017 6,212 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 158 ha Mareeba fire, August 2022 12,164 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Mareeba fire, September 2019 14,018 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started60,891 ha reached on 15 Oct1.1 %
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 | 26.5 °C | 48 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 16 Oct | 29.4 °C | 33 % | 54 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 17 Oct | 27.9 °C | 34 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Oct | 30.0 °C | 24 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Oct | 32.0 °C | 19 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Oct | 29.6 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Oct | 30.6 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Oct | 31.0 °C | 23 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Oct | 32.1 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 24 Oct | 33.5 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Oct | 32.6 °C | 22 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 26 Oct | 33.8 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 27 Oct | 34.3 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 32 |
| 28 Oct | 33.1 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 20.2 mm | Low 6 |
| 29 Oct after | 31.2 °C | 36 % | 44 km/h | 22.8 mm | Very low 3 |
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 23 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 95 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 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 · 2,654Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,499 haMareebaSeptember 2021 · 20 days · 3 km away
- 25,210 haMareeba12 November 2016 · 29 days · 5 km away
- 36,633 haMareeba4 June 2024 · 21 days · 28 km away
- 25,367 haMareeba15 October 2025 · 10 days · 36 km away
- 14,269 haMareeba27 November 2020 · 6 days · 38 km away
- 19,216 haMareeba11 October 2026 · 7 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mareeba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2025 and 28 October 2025: 14 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 60,564 hectares (605.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (60,891 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.