Katherine fire, July 2026 Katherine
The fire started on 18 July 2026 in Katherine, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,362 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1394th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 319 in Australia in 2026, of 859.
The power measured by the satellite is low (25.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 10,362ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 18 Jul 2026 – 30 Jul 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 245
- in a single hotspot: 25 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 69MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,137 ha in 2016, 4,045 ha in 2017, 6,113 ha in 2018, 6,644 ha in 2019, 1,113 ha in 2020, 1,404 ha in 2021, 6,085 ha in 2022, 4,772 ha in 2023, 5,660 ha in 2024, 6,229 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,420 ha that had burned before.
- 5,561 ha Katherine fire, September 2024 12,007 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,360 ha Katherine fire, May 2022 7,946 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 888 ha Katherine fire, August 2025 138,097 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 155 ha Katherine fire, September 2025 14,532 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 38 ha Katherine fire, November 2016 6,548 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5 ha Katherine fire, August 2018 111,224 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Katherine fire, September 2016 83,250 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Katherine where it started10,422 ha reached on 17 Jul1.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Jul | 28.4 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Jul | 27.6 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Jul | 28.2 °C | 13 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Jul | 28.8 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Jul | 29.4 °C | 16 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 22 Jul | 30.4 °C | 18 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 23 Jul | 31.0 °C | 21 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 Jul | 30.4 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 25 Jul | 29.2 °C | 18 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Jul | 27.8 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 27 Jul | 28.0 °C | 15 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 28 Jul | 27.5 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Jul | 29.0 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 30 Jul | 29.8 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 31 Jul after | 30.8 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 24 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 24 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 3 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 5 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 28 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 6 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 26 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 8 Aug after | 32.3 °C | 26 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 27 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 245Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Katherine fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 July 2026 and 30 July 2026: 13 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,362 hectares (103.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Katherine (10,422 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 245 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.
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.