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Mareeba fire, 5 December 2025 Mareeba

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2025, 03:46 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2025 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,476 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 715th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 468 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
10,476ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
5 Dec 2025 – 14 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Dec
2025
Heat detections
224
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
3.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Dec 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec14 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

5891011121415

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
59km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 22 Dec.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 829 ha in 2017, 433 ha in 2018, 9,114 ha in 2020, 993 ha in 2022, 3,421 ha in 2023, 463 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,356 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    10,515 ha reached on 5 Dec
    0.2 %

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)
1 Dec 35.1 °C 43 % 30 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 1
2 Dec 37.2 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
3 Dec 35.5 °C 37 % 59 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
4 Dec 31.7 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
5 Dec 35.8 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Dec 37.2 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
7 Dec 38.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Dec 37.3 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Dec 36.5 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Dec 37.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Dec 38.2 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Dec 38.2 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Dec 38.2 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Dec 38.1 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Dec after 39.6 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Dec after 38.9 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
17 Dec after 35.6 °C 42 % 49 km/h 1.3 mm High 23
18 Dec after 37.3 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
19 Dec after 38.6 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Dec after 37.7 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Dec after 37.3 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Dec after 38.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 6.2 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Nov 2025
After · 21 Dec 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 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
34567891011121314151617
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 · 224Every 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 5 December 2025 and 14 December 2025: 10 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 10,476 hectares (104.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (10,515 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.