How long did the East Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2017 to 10 September 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2017 to 8 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,384 hectares (163.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered East Arnhem (16,461 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2017-08-19 → 2017-09-10

East Arnhem fire, 19 August 2017 East Arnhem

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2017, 15:59 UTC

The fire started on 19 August 2017 in East Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,384 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 815th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3514 with a page). Number 163 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Arnhem · 2016 East Arnhem · 2016 East Arnhem · 2025 East Arnhem · 2022

Burnt area: 16,384ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 19 Aug 2017 – 10 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 19 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 595; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 291MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Aug10 Sept

Play back 11 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 27 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 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

59km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,190 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,942 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (164 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

East Arnhem where it started

16,461 ha reached on 20 Aug

0.5 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
19 Aug	33.3 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Aug	32.8 °C	26 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
21 Aug	31.2 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Aug	31.6 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Aug	31.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Aug	32.1 °C	34 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
25 Aug	31.6 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug	32.2 °C	28 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Aug	31.8 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Aug	31.2 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Aug	31.5 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Aug	31.4 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Aug	32.4 °C	30 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Sept	33.7 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept	32.3 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Sept	33.1 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Sept	32.8 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Sept	33.5 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Sept	33.6 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Sept	32.3 °C	24 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
8 Sept	32.7 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 Sept	32.9 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Sept	32.5 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Sept after	32.6 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Sept after	31.4 °C	50 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
13 Sept after	32.5 °C	44 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Sept after	33.0 °C	39 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Sept after	33.6 °C	24 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
16 Sept after	33.2 °C	21 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
17 Sept after	33.4 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
18 Sept after	34.2 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Sept after	32.4 °C	44 %	50 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
20 Sept after	32.9 °C	42 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Aug 2017

After · 17 Sept 2017

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 · 595Every 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 East Arnhem fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2017 to 10 September 2017 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2017 to 8 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,384 hectares (163.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered East Arnhem (16,461 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 September 2017 → 10 September 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 26 August 2017 → 19 August 2017.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 26 August 2017 to 8 September 2017. 595 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 2015, 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