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East Arnhem fire, 3 December 2019 East Arnhem, Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 9 Dec 2019, 03:55 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2019 in East Arnhem, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1253th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 334 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2025Roper Gulf · 2026Roper Gulf · 2017East Arnhem · 2025

Burnt area
11,409ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
3 Dec 2019 – 9 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
3 Dec
2019
Heat detections
356
in a single hotspot: 161 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
826MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec9 Dec
9 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2019 · 390 MW · 38 4 Dec 2019 · 3,209 MW · 158 5 Dec 2019 · 1,495 MW · 107 6 Dec 2019 · 278 MW · 21 7 Dec 2019 · 319 MW · 24 8 Dec 2019 · 79 MW · 5 9 Dec 2019 · 13 MW · 3
3 Dec 4 Dec 5 Dec 6 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec 9 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

42°high
44km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,181 ha in 2016, 775 ha in 2017, 5,683 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,697 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.2% of the area of London (114 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
    6,269 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.2 %
  2. Roper Gulf
    5,210 ha reached on 3 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
3 Dec 39.4 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Dec 39.3 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Dec 40.7 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Dec 41.2 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
7 Dec 41.2 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Dec 41.8 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
9 Dec 41.0 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
10 Dec after 39.9 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Dec after 38.5 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Dec after 41.0 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Dec after 40.6 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Dec after 40.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Dec after 42.1 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Dec after 41.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Dec after 40.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Dec after 41.4 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Dec after 39.6 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2019
After · 16 Dec 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 · 356Every 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 3 December 2019 to 9 December 2019 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2019 to 8 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,409 hectares (114.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: East Arnhem (6,269 ha, 0.2 %); Roper Gulf (5,210 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 December 2019 → 9 December 2019.

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 3 December 2019 to 8 December 2019. 356 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.