Mareeba fire, 5 November 2025 Mareeba, Etheridge
The fire started on 5 November 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 106,455 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
It is the 37th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 19 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.
- Burnt area
- 106,455ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 23days
- 5 Nov 2025 – 27 Nov 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 5 Nov
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 3,346
- in a single hotspot: 386 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 32.0GW
- 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: 25.6 mm on 29 Nov.
This area had burned before
44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,222 ha in 2016, 23,251 ha in 2017, 10,465 ha in 2019, 3,214 ha in 2020, 10,594 ha in 2021, 3,129 ha in 2022, 1,429 ha in 2023, 5,960 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 46,855 ha that had burned before.
- 9,940 ha Mareeba fire, September 2019 133,164 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,704 ha Mareeba fire, December 2017 8,406 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,433 ha Mareeba fire, November 2021 14,383 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,415 ha Etheridge fire, December 2017 14,722 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,414 ha Mareeba fire, June 2024 13,442 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,675 ha Mareeba fire, November 2024 11,967 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,220 ha Mareeba fire, April 2022 5,503 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,134 ha Mareeba fire, December 2017 7,964 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started98,998 ha reached on 3 Nov1.8 %
-
8,169 ha reached on 3 Nov0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Oct | 37.6 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Oct | 38.0 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 43 |
| 31 Oct | 37.9 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 12.4 mm | Low 11 |
| 1 Nov | 38.6 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Nov | 38.3 °C | 19 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 3 Nov | 36.9 °C | 25 % | 54 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Nov | 37.0 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Nov | 36.9 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 6 Nov | 38.4 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 7 Nov | 36.3 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Nov | 35.9 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Nov | 35.3 °C | 34 % | 41 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 29 |
| 10 Nov | 38.6 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 11 Nov | 37.2 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Nov | 37.5 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 38 |
| 13 Nov | 36.0 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 26.9 mm | Low 8 |
| 14 Nov | 32.4 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 15 Nov | 36.6 °C | 30 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Nov | 34.0 °C | 44 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 17 Nov | 35.9 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Nov | 38.0 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Nov | 38.7 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 41 |
| 20 Nov | 40.3 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Nov | 40.4 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Nov | 41.2 °C | 13 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 23 Nov | 39.1 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 24 Nov | 39.7 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Nov | 39.6 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 1.7 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Nov | 38.6 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 8.5 mm | Low 11 |
| 27 Nov | 38.4 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 33.9 mm | Low 7 |
| 28 Nov after | 36.8 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 29 Nov after | 35.8 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 25.6 mm | Very low 2 |
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 9 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 83 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 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 · 3,346Every 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 5 November 2025 and 27 November 2025: 23 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 106,455 hectares (1,064.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (98,998 ha, 1.8 %); Etheridge (8,169 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.