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AU · Australia · –

Croydon fire, 9 November 2026 Croydon

Dying down · last detection 14 Nov 2026, 04:53 UTC

The fire started on 9 November 2026 in Croydon, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,112 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Is it still active?

No detections since 14 Nov 2026, 04:53 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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
6,112ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
9 Nov 2026 – 14 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Nov
2026
Heat detections
150
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
175MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Nov14 Nov
14 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

9 Nov 2026 · 34 MW · 13 10 Nov 2026 · 216 MW · 26 11 Nov 2026 · 621 MW · 69 12 Nov 2026 · 146 MW · 37 13 Nov 2026 · 18 MW · 4 14 Nov 2026 · 15 MW · 1
9 Nov 11 Nov 13 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
36km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 175 ha in 2016, 57 ha in 2020, 447 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 586 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (61 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. Croydon where it started
    6,115 ha reached on 9 Nov
    0.2 %

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.

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)
9 Nov 40.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
10 Nov 38.0 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
11 Nov 38.0 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
12 Nov 39.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Nov 39.3 °C 28 % 36 km/h 4.6 mm Moderate 16
14 Nov 37.9 °C 37 % 32 km/h 1.3 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Nov 2026
After · 13 Nov 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
7 Nov9 Nov11 Nov13 Nov
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 150Every 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 Croydon fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 November 2026 to 14 November 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 November 2026 to 13 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,112 hectares (61.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Croydon (6,115 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Croydon fire still active?
No fire detections since 14 Nov 2026, 04:53 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 14 November 2026.
  1. Page published (6,112 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 November 2026 to 13 November 2026. 150 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.