Mareeba fire, 27 May 2026 Mareeba
The fire started on 27 May 2026 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,985 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 682th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 294 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
- Burnt area
- 10,985ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 27 May 2026 – 30 May 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 27 May
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 197
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.6GW
- 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 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 8 Jun.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 291 ha in 2017, 901 ha in 2018, 7,269 ha in 2019, 825 ha in 2022, 541 ha in 2023, 6,658 ha in 2024, 86 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,140 ha that had burned before.
- 6,223 ha Mareeba fire, November 2019 27,515 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,552 ha Mareeba fire, June 2024 9,086 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 106 ha Mareeba fire, September 2024 8,035 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started11,016 ha reached on 27 May0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 May | 29.6 °C | 40 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 28 May | 29.4 °C | 36 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 29 May | 29.6 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 May | 29.4 °C | 25 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 31 May after | 29.7 °C | 26 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Jun after | 28.6 °C | 33 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Jun after | 29.5 °C | 35 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 3 Jun after | 29.9 °C | 36 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Jun after | 29.5 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Jun after | 28.7 °C | 38 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Jun after | 26.0 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Jun after | 24.1 °C | 48 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 8 Jun after | 24.7 °C | 63 % | 46 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 8 |
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 29 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 197Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 27,515 haMareebaNovember 2019 · 16 days · 4 km away
- 38,261 haMareebaOctober 2023 · 16 days · 21 km away
- 31,215 haMareebaAugust 2023 · 14 days · 24 km away
- 23,704 haMareeba9 November 2024 · 21 days · 24 km away
- 19,216 haMareeba11 October 2026 · 7 days · 27 km away
- 16,131 haMareeba11 September 2023 · 16 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mareeba fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 May 2026 and 30 May 2026: 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 10,985 hectares (109.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (11,016 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class 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
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.