Mareeba fire, 17 October 2025 Mareeba
The fire started on 17 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 62,630 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 73th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 51 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 62,630ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 17 Oct 2025 – 29 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 17 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 1,278
- in a single hotspot: 134 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 9.2GW
- 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 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 30 Oct.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 20,518 ha in 2016, 2,505 ha in 2018, 10,024 ha in 2019, 35,396 ha in 2020, 13,897 ha in 2021, 17,222 ha in 2022, 3,050 ha in 2023, 32,035 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 58,972 ha that had burned before.
- 32,066 ha Mareeba fire, October 2020 51,390 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 24,709 ha Mareeba fire, November 2024 90,743 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,703 ha Mareeba fire, November 2016 11,501 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,121 ha Mareeba fire, September 2019 133,164 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,232 ha Mareeba fire, October 2021 7,648 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,856 ha Mareeba fire, November 2021 6,334 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,807 ha Mareeba fire, October 2022 6,710 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,266 ha Mareeba fire, November 2022 15,295 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started62,841 ha reached on 14 Oct1.2 %
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 | 37.8 °C | 29 % | 29 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Oct | 36.2 °C | 37 % | 56 km/h | 2.3 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 15 Oct | 36.6 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Oct | 36.6 °C | 31 % | 39 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 37 |
| 17 Oct | 36.7 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 18 Oct | 38.1 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 19 Oct | 40.1 °C | 12 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 20 Oct | 37.7 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 21 Oct | 36.8 °C | 25 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Oct | 36.6 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 23 Oct | 37.9 °C | 21 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Oct | 38.0 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 25 Oct | 37.8 °C | 24 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 26 Oct | 38.7 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 27 Oct | 39.3 °C | 23 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Oct | 38.3 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 4.1 mm | High 29 |
| 29 Oct | 37.9 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 3.8 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 30 Oct after | 37.0 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 2.0 mm | High 23 |
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 25 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 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 · 1,278Every 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 17 October 2025 and 29 October 2025: 13 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 62,630 hectares (626.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (62,841 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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
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.