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Mareeba fire, July 2026 Mareeba

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2026, 04:12 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2026 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,228 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1636th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 796 in Australia in 2026, of 859.

Burnt area
5,228ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
10 Jul 2026 – 13 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
10 Jul
2026
Heat detections
156
in a single hotspot: 71 MW
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul13 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

10

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
18km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 436 ha in 2018, 539 ha in 2019, 933 ha in 2020, 172 ha in 2021, 1,464 ha in 2023, 68 ha in 2024, 184 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,881 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,240 ha reached on 10 Jul
    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)
9 Jul 24.8 °C 49 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
10 Jul 25.2 °C 49 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
11 Jul 27.4 °C 35 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
12 Jul 26.1 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
13 Jul 24.2 °C 47 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
14 Jul after 25.2 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
15 Jul after 25.1 °C 40 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Jul after 23.0 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
17 Jul after 23.0 °C 41 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Jul after 23.5 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
19 Jul after 23.5 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Jul after 24.8 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Jul after 26.5 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
22 Jul after 26.0 °C 46 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
23 Jul after 28.0 °C 31 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jul 2026
After · 20 Jul 2026

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 12 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
Optical depth0.30
2345678910111213141516
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 · 156Every 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 July 2026 and 13 July 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 5,228 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mareeba (5,240 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 18 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
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
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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.