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Tablelands fire, 17 September 2018 Mareeba, Tablelands

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2018, 03:29 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Tablelands, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 35,924 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 153th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 52 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
35,924ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
17 Sept 2018 – 15 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
17 Sept
2018
Heat detections
1,420
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
15.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

15 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept15 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1718192021222324252627282930123456789101112131415

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
59km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 581 ha in 2016, 557 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Mareeba
    29,636 ha reached on 18 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Tablelands where it started
    6,529 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.6 %

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)
17 Sept 29.5 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 27.6 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 28.1 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept 29.4 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept 27.5 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Sept 26.1 °C 35 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Sept 25.1 °C 36 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept 26.6 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Sept 26.7 °C 29 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Sept 26.7 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Sept 27.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Sept 26.3 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Sept 27.4 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Sept 28.0 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct 26.7 °C 37 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Oct 26.4 °C 27 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Oct 26.7 °C 34 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Oct 29.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Oct 28.5 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Oct 30.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Oct 30.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Oct 30.0 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Oct 31.2 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Oct 32.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Oct 32.1 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 31.9 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
13 Oct 29.6 °C 34 % 36 km/h 3.1 mm Moderate 13
14 Oct 29.5 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
15 Oct 29.7 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
16 Oct after 29.9 °C 42 % 38 km/h 8.1 mm Low 6
17 Oct after 28.9 °C 36 % 26 km/h 1.8 mm Low 8
18 Oct after 28.5 °C 46 % 35 km/h 1.7 mm Low 10
19 Oct after 28.5 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
20 Oct after 30.1 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
21 Oct after 30.4 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
22 Oct after 30.5 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Oct after 29.7 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
24 Oct after 30.5 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
25 Oct after 30.0 °C 24 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Oct after 32.0 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Oct after 34.7 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Oct after 33.5 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Oct after 35.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Oct after 33.1 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Oct after 33.1 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Nov after 30.4 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2018
After · 22 Oct 2018

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 · 1,420Every 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 Tablelands fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 15 October 2018: 29 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 35,924 hectares (359.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mareeba (29,636 ha, 0.6 %); Tablelands (6,529 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 59 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

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.