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Coomalie fire, 14 May 2018 Coomalie

Out · last detection 27 May 2018, 04:14 UTC

The fire started on 14 May 2018 in Coomalie, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,653 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2433th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 652 in Australia in 2018, of 924.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2019Unincorporated NT · 2018

Burnt area
6,653ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
14 May 2018 – 27 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 May
2018
Heat detections
201
in a single hotspot: 99 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
149MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 May27 May
27 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

14 May 2018 · 169 MW · 12 15 May 2018 · 43 MW · 9 16 May 2018 · 652 MW · 31 17 May 2018 · 127 MW · 22 18 May 2018 · 181 MW · 37 19 May 2018 · 78 MW · 11 20 May 2018 · 154 MW · 20 21 May 2018 · 54 MW · 10 22 May 2018 · 19 MW · 9 23 May 2018 · 94 MW · 17 24 May 2018 · 358 MW · 20 25 May 2018 · 8 MW · 2 27 May 2018 · 2 MW · 1
14 May 16 May 18 May 20 May 22 May 24 May 27 May

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
51km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,207 ha in 2016, 2,296 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,577 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Coomalie where it started
    6,686 ha reached on 14 May
    3.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area0.32 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.32 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
14 May 30.6 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 May 30.2 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 May 29.7 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 May 29.5 °C 19 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 May 30.4 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 May 30.4 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 May 32.0 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 May 32.7 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 May 31.8 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 May 32.4 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 May 33.2 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 May 33.0 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 May 33.5 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 May 33.0 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 May after 32.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 May after 32.9 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 May after 32.3 °C 29 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 May after 32.5 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Jun after 32.1 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Jun after 31.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Jun after 30.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Jun after 30.0 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Jun after 29.3 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Jun after 29.7 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jun after 30.4 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Jun after 31.4 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Jun after 31.4 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Jun after 32.4 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 May 2018
After · 3 Jun 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 · 201Every 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 Coomalie fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 May 2018 to 27 May 2018 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 May 2018 to 24 May 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,653 hectares (66.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Coomalie (6,686 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 May 2018 to 24 May 2018. 201 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.