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Mareeba fire, 6 September 2026 Mareeba, Cook

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2026, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2026 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,793 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1460th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 695 in Australia in 2026, of 848.

Burnt area
5,793ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
6 Sept 2026 – 10 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
6 Sept
2026
Heat detections
132
in a single hotspot: 161 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Sept 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

678910

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
63km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 127 ha in 2016, 12 ha in 2017, 3,745 ha in 2018, 1 ha in 2019, 1,909 ha in 2020, 1,768 ha in 2021, 5,199 ha in 2023, 3,100 ha in 2024, 701 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,779 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba where it started
    5,764 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.1 %
  2. Cook
    41 ha
    0.0 %

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)
6 Sept 26.7 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Sept 27.0 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 29.8 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 27.9 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Sept 25.0 °C 50 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Sept after 23.2 °C 50 % 79 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Sept after 24.6 °C 47 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Sept after 24.5 °C 46 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept after 24.4 °C 50 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Sept after 24.7 °C 47 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Sept after 26.3 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept after 24.5 °C 35 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept after 23.2 °C 46 % 84 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept after 23.5 °C 47 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Sept after 24.7 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2026
After · 17 Sept 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 8 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1014 µg/m³
Optical depth0.20
45678910111213
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 · 132Every 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 6 September 2026 and 10 September 2026: 5 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 5,793 hectares (57.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (5,764 ha, 0.1 %); Cook (41 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

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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.