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East Arnhem fire, 6 July 2018 East Arnhem

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2018, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 6 July 2018 in East Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,944 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 776th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3508 with a page). Number 181 in Australia in 2018, of 924.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Arnhem · 2024East Arnhem · 2024East Arnhem · 2026East Arnhem · 2018

Burnt area
16,944ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
6 Jul 2018 – 2 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Jul
2018
Heat detections
633
in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
210MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jul2 Aug
2 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jul 2018 · 626 MW · 55 7 Jul 2018 · 7 MW · 5 8 Jul 2018 · 91 MW · 19 9 Jul 2018 · 23 MW · 4 10 Jul 2018 · 123 MW · 17 11 Jul 2018 · 190 MW · 28 12 Jul 2018 · 207 MW · 29 13 Jul 2018 · 141 MW · 19 14 Jul 2018 · 33 MW · 8 15 Jul 2018 · 108 MW · 17 16 Jul 2018 · 197 MW · 37 17 Jul 2018 · 108 MW · 20 18 Jul 2018 · 276 MW · 51 19 Jul 2018 · 276 MW · 36 20 Jul 2018 · 562 MW · 16 21 Jul 2018 · 408 MW · 62 22 Jul 2018 · 381 MW · 63 23 Jul 2018 · 1,298 MW · 75 24 Jul 2018 · 252 MW · 38 25 Jul 2018 · 32 MW · 6 26 Jul 2018 · 48 MW · 9 28 Jul 2018 · 27 MW · 7 29 Jul 2018 · 5 MW · 3 30 Jul 2018 · 37 MW · 6 31 Jul 2018 · 7 MW · 1 2 Aug 2018 · 10 MW · 2
6 Jul 10 Jul 14 Jul 18 Jul 22 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 31 Jul

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
57km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,553 ha in 2016, 726 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (169 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. East Arnhem where it started
    17,076 ha reached on 6 Jul
    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 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)
6 Jul 29.5 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Jul 28.2 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Jul 27.6 °C 40 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Jul 27.0 °C 51 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Jul 28.1 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jul 28.4 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Jul 28.5 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Jul 28.5 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jul 29.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Jul 31.3 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul 29.9 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jul 30.9 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jul 30.9 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Jul 30.5 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Jul 30.2 °C 42 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Jul 29.1 °C 34 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Jul 29.0 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Jul 30.3 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jul 31.2 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jul 31.3 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Jul 31.2 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Jul 32.4 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul 32.8 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jul 32.6 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul 28.7 °C 43 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Jul 30.0 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Aug 30.0 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Aug 31.9 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Aug after 32.3 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Aug after 30.7 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Aug after 32.1 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Aug after 33.1 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug after 28.6 °C 35 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug after 29.6 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug after 29.8 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Aug after 31.4 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 31.5 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
12 Aug after 28.2 °C 42 % 55 km/h 0.6 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2018
After · 9 Aug 2018

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 · 633Every 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 East Arnhem fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 July 2018 to 2 August 2018 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 July 2018 to 31 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,944 hectares (169.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered East Arnhem (17,076 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 31 July 2018 → 2 August 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 July 2018 to 31 July 2018. 633 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.