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Mareeba fire, 10 November 2025 Mareeba

Out · last detection 13 Nov 2025, 03:45 UTC

The fire started on 10 November 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,438 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1556th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 1008 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
5,438ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
10 Nov 2025 – 13 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Nov
2025
Heat detections
149
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
954MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Nov 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Nov13 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

101113

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
48km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 16 Nov.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,690 ha in 2017, 3,608 ha in 2019, 1,703 ha in 2021, 1,508 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,970 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,476 ha reached on 10 Nov
    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)
10 Nov 39.2 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Nov 40.4 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Nov 40.9 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
13 Nov 37.0 °C 33 % 39 km/h 1.0 mm High 33
14 Nov after 31.7 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
15 Nov after 37.4 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Nov after 35.5 °C 40 % 34 km/h 3.2 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Nov 2025
After · 20 Nov 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 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).

PM2.5 peak83 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth1.28
8910111213141516
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 · 149Every 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 10 November 2025 and 13 November 2025: 4 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 5,438 hectares (54.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (5,476 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.