How long did the Coomalie fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 June 2019 to 1 July 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 June 2019 to 30 June 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,015 hectares (60.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coomalie (3,747 ha, 1.8 %); Litchfield (2,302 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-06-18 → 2019-07-01

Coomalie fire, June 2019 Coomalie, Litchfield

Out · last detection 1 Jul 2019, 04:14 UTC

The fire started on 18 June 2019 in Coomalie, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,015 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2760th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 642 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2020 Unincorporated NT · 2026

Burnt area: 6,015ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 18 Jun 2019 – 1 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 18 Jun; 2019
Heat detections: 219; in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 69MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jun1 Jul

Play back 1 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jun 20 Jun 22 Jun 24 Jun 26 Jun 28 Jun 30 Jun

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

44km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,935 ha in 2016, 2,186 ha in 2017, 3,006 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,340 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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

Coomalie where it started

3,747 ha reached on 18 Jun

1.8 %
Litchfield

2,302 ha reached on 19 Jun

0.8 %

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 area0.50 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.50 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	Danger (FWI)
18 Jun	32.0 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Very high 42
19 Jun	29.9 °C	16 %	38 km/h	Very high 45
20 Jun	30.3 °C	21 %	39 km/h	Very high 46
21 Jun	29.8 °C	20 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
22 Jun	29.5 °C	25 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
23 Jun	29.6 °C	21 %	36 km/h	Very high 43
24 Jun	29.5 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
25 Jun	29.8 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Very high 45
26 Jun	29.5 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
27 Jun	30.1 °C	18 %	35 km/h	Very high 46
28 Jun	29.8 °C	33 %	23 km/h	High 34
29 Jun	32.0 °C	25 %	37 km/h	Very high 42
30 Jun	33.5 °C	32 %	39 km/h	Very high 41
1 Jul	32.5 °C	30 %	40 km/h	Very high 42
2 Jul after	31.6 °C	22 %	37 km/h	Very high 39
3 Jul after	30.7 °C	23 %	35 km/h	Very high 38
4 Jul after	30.2 °C	21 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
5 Jul after	29.9 °C	22 %	30 km/h	High 36
6 Jul after	30.0 °C	28 %	27 km/h	High 36
7 Jul after	31.0 °C	20 %	41 km/h	Very high 42
8 Jul after	31.3 °C	20 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
9 Jul after	31.7 °C	29 %	34 km/h	Very high 39
10 Jul after	30.8 °C	31 %	32 km/h	High 36
11 Jul after	30.6 °C	27 %	35 km/h	High 37
12 Jul after	31.5 °C	29 %	36 km/h	Very high 39
13 Jul after	31.6 °C	26 %	46 km/h	Very high 45
14 Jul after	29.3 °C	19 %	49 km/h	Very high 48
15 Jul after	28.9 °C	18 %	45 km/h	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jun 2019

After · 8 Jul 2019

Before After

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 · 219Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 18 June 2019 to 1 July 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 June 2019 to 30 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,015 hectares (60.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coomalie (3,747 ha, 1.8 %); Litchfield (2,302 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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 18 June 2019 to 30 June 2019. 219 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.

Where it burned