Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Mareeba fire, 17 October 2025 Mareeba

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2025, 15:07 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,103 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1368th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 878 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
6,103ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
17 Oct 2025 – 22 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
17 Oct
2025
Heat detections
209
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct22 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

171819202122

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
49km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 54 ha in 2018, 159 ha in 2021, 98 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 261 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    6,134 ha reached on 17 Oct
    0.1 %

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)
17 Oct 30.2 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
18 Oct 32.0 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Oct 33.0 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Oct 31.4 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Oct 31.8 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Oct 32.4 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Oct after 33.7 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct after 33.8 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Oct after 32.9 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Oct after 33.5 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Oct after 36.1 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Oct after 33.9 °C 38 % 36 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Oct 2025
After · 29 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 guideline3 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
1516171819202122232425
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 · 209Every 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 17 October 2025 and 22 October 2025: 6 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 6,103 hectares (61.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (6,134 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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
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.