How long did the East Arnhem fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2017 to 15 October 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2017 to 13 October 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,027 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered East Arnhem (5,055 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.

AU · Australia · 2017-09-25 → 2017-10-15

East Arnhem fire, 25 September 2017 East Arnhem

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2017, 04:15 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2017 in East Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,027 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3479th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 855 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Arnhem · 2018 East Arnhem · 2023 East Arnhem · 2026 East Arnhem · 2021

Burnt area: 5,027ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 25 Sept 2017 – 15 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 25 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 179; in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 105MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept15 Oct

Play back 15 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 14 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

49km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

5,055 ha reached on 1 Oct

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
1 Oct	33.4 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Oct	32.6 °C	53 %	43 km/h	5.1 mm	Low 8
3 Oct	32.7 °C	50 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
4 Oct	32.5 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
5 Oct	33.3 °C	40 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Oct	32.8 °C	50 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	High 26
7 Oct	32.1 °C	53 %	41 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 16
8 Oct	30.5 °C	59 %	49 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 18
9 Oct	32.3 °C	43 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
10 Oct	33.1 °C	38 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Oct	32.2 °C	52 %	40 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 19
12 Oct	32.4 °C	47 %	47 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
13 Oct	33.2 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Oct	33.2 °C	48 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Oct	34.0 °C	42 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
16 Oct after	34.7 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
17 Oct after	34.2 °C	41 %	29 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Sept 2017

After · 22 Oct 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 · 179Every 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 25 September 2017 to 15 October 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 October 2017 to 13 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,027 hectares (50.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered East Arnhem (5,055 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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

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.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 13 October 2017 → 15 October 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 1 October 2017 → 25 September 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 1 October 2017 to 13 October 2017. 179 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.

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