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Coomalie fire, August 2019 Unincorporated NT, Coomalie

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2019, 05:36 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2019 in Coomalie, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1433th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 373 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2018Unincorporated NT · 2016Unincorporated NT · 2025Coomalie · 2022

Burnt area
10,137ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
25 Aug 2019 – 3 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
25 Aug
2019
Heat detections
387
in a single hotspot: 238 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
498MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug3 Sept
4 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2019 · 1 MW · 1 27 Aug 2019 · 6 MW · 3 28 Aug 2019 · 42 MW · 19 29 Aug 2019 · 84 MW · 18 30 Aug 2019 · 169 MW · 67 31 Aug 2019 · 2,192 MW · 141 1 Sept 2019 · 2,038 MW · 95 2 Sept 2019 · 348 MW · 26 3 Sept 2019 · 72 MW · 14 4 Sept 2019 · 24 MW · 3
25 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept

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
48km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,441 ha in 2016, 3,341 ha in 2017, 4,285 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,190 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (101 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. Unincorporated NT
    5,390 ha reached on 30 Aug
    0.3 %
  2. Coomalie where it started
    4,665 ha reached on 25 Aug
    2.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
25 Aug 32.9 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Aug 32.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Aug 33.5 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 34.1 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
29 Aug 30.9 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Aug 31.3 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
31 Aug 32.6 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Sept 33.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Sept 33.5 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Sept 33.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept after 33.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Sept after 33.6 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Sept after 34.4 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept after 35.1 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept after 36.0 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept after 35.5 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Sept after 32.9 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
11 Sept after 32.8 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
12 Sept after 32.9 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
13 Sept after 33.1 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
14 Sept after 33.7 °C 20 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2019
After · 10 Sept 2019

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 · 387Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 August 2019 and 3 September 2019: 10 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 10,137 hectares (101.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Unincorporated NT (5,390 ha, 0.3 %); Coomalie (4,665 ha, 2.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 387 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.