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Litchfield fire, June 2026 Litchfield

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2026, 04:37 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2026 in Litchfield, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,066 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2257th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3503 with a page). Number 530 in Australia in 2026, of 876.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Unincorporated NT · 2018Unincorporated NT · 2022Unincorporated NT · 2019

Burnt area
7,066ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
20 Jun 2026 – 29 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Jun
2026
Heat detections
151
in a single hotspot: 76 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Average daily power
105MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun29 Jun
28 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 2026 · 423 MW · 29 21 Jun 2026 · 201 MW · 43 22 Jun 2026 · 185 MW · 33 23 Jun 2026 · 16 MW · 6 24 Jun 2026 · 16 MW · 4 25 Jun 2026 · 22 MW · 10 26 Jun 2026 · 52 MW · 9 27 Jun 2026 · 22 MW · 7 28 Jun 2026 · 9 MW · 2
20 Jun 22 Jun 24 Jun 26 Jun 28 Jun

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
43km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,481 ha in 2016, 2,839 ha in 2017, 3,457 ha in 2018, 549 ha in 2019, 3,353 ha in 2020, 2,809 ha in 2021, 4,158 ha in 2022, 3,421 ha in 2023, 2,970 ha in 2024, 1,604 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,800 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 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. Litchfield where it started
    7,115 ha reached on 20 Jun
    2.4 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area4.9 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.9 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
20 Jun 30.0 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Jun 30.1 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jun 30.5 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Jun 31.3 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jun 31.4 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jun 31.4 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Jun 30.9 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Jun 31.0 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jun 31.1 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Jun 31.9 °C 41 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Jun after 30.8 °C 50 % 22 km/h 0.5 mm High 23
1 Jul after 31.2 °C 51 % 19 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
2 Jul after 32.6 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
3 Jul after 33.0 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Jul after 32.7 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Jul after 32.2 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Jul after 31.7 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Jul after 31.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Jul after 32.0 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jul after 32.0 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Jul after 32.0 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Jul after 31.7 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jul after 32.0 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Jul after 32.1 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Jul after 32.0 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul after 31.1 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jul after 31.4 °C 33 % 38 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 · 13 Jun 2026
After · 6 Jul 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 8 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 23: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1046 µg/m³
Optical depth0.43
18192021222324252627282930123456789
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 151Every 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 Litchfield fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 June 2026 and 29 June 2026: 10 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 7,066 hectares (70.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Litchfield (7,115 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

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.

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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 151 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 2025, 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.