Mareeba fire, 8 October 2026 Mareeba
The fire started on 8 October 2026 in Mareeba, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 142,813 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 16th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1748 with a page). Number 4 in Australia in 2026, of 908.
Compare with…
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 142,813ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 8 Oct 2026 – 2 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 8 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1,773
- in a single hotspot: 491 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.0GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mareeba where it started143,516 ha reached on 8 Oct2.7 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Oct | 34.2 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Oct | 35.0 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Oct | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 37 |
| 11 Oct | 35.9 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 38 |
| 12 Oct | 37.8 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Oct | 36.2 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Oct | 36.3 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Oct | 35.8 °C | 35 % | 27 km/h | 6.2 mm | Low 9 |
| 16 Oct | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 17 Oct | 34.8 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 3.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 18 Oct | 33.3 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 15.7 mm | Very low 4 |
| 19 Oct | 34.7 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Oct | 35.6 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 21 Oct | 36.0 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Oct | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 28 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 25 |
| 23 Oct | 34.0 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 30.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 24 Oct | 33.8 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 1.2 mm | Low 9 |
| 25 Oct | 35.4 °C | 39 % | 33 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 26 Oct | 36.3 °C | 36 % | 26 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 27 Oct | 35.3 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 28 Oct | 36.7 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 29 Oct | 38.0 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 30 Oct | 37.5 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 31 Oct | 38.6 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 3.4 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 1 Nov | 37.0 °C | 34 % | 27 km/h | 2.2 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 2 Nov | 36.6 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 2.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
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.
Detections table · 1,773Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mareeba fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2026 to 1 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 142,813 hectares (1,428.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Mareeba (143,516 ha, 2.7 %).
- Is the Mareeba fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 October 2026 to 1 November 2026. 1,773 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.