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AU · Australia · –

Lockhart River fire, November 2026 Lockhart River

Burning · last detection 15 Nov 2026, 03:38 UTC

The fire started on 5 November 2026 in Lockhart River, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,197 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably a savanna fire in Australia’s tropical north, not a bushfire like those in the south of the country. Millions of hectares of northern savanna and grassland burn every year: much of it in burns lit on purpose early in the dry season (traditional fire management, parks and cattle stations), the rest in grass fires that return to the same ground every few years. This is our assumption, based on the location; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2023Lockhart River · 2019Lockhart River · 2021Cook · 2018

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 15 Nov 2026, 03:38 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Wind, humidity and rain for the next 72 h

Burnt area
6,197ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
5 Nov 2026 – 15 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Nov
2026
Heat detections
199
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
164MW
detected power per day, on average

The next 72 hours

The wind is almost calm (1 km/h) and no sharp shifts are expected until Thu 19, 00:00.

ECMWF IFS 0.25° at the centre of the fire · computed 15 Nov 2026, 15:27 UTC

No sharp changes in the next 72 h

No strong wind shifts and no dry nights. No warnings does not mean the fire will go out: in this weather it can carry on as it is.

Checked, no warning: no wind shifts of more than 60° nights recover humidity (peaks of 92 % or more) no useful rain expected (0.6 mm in 72 h)

Hour by hour, local time

Tap the strip to see each hour

Mean wind Gusts where it blows to Relative humidity Night (8 pm to 8 am) Rain (mm) · chance in %

Where is it blowing? The next 48 h

geoBoundaries/Australian Bureau of Statistics (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0))

At this hour

Places the fan reaches

    Is it heading my way?

    We compare your point with the fan for each hour. Your location never leaves your device.

    or tap the map

    This is not an official warning. It is a global model forecast with cells of about 25 km, at the centre of the fire: it cannot see valley winds or the winds the fire itself creates. The fan shows where the wind blows, not where the fire will spread. If in doubt, follow what the authorities say.

    Emergencies · Australia 000 Emergency number and official warnings

    Forecast: ECMWF IFS 0.25° (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), served by our own Open-Meteo instance; the chance of rain comes from the ECMWF ensemble. Variables: wind and gusts at 10 m, wind at 850 hPa, relative humidity and temperature at 2 m, rain. Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).

    Fire: GWIS / Copernicus (reconstructed from VIIRS) (CC BY 4.0); hotspots from the last 24 h: VIIRS from NASA FIRMS. Boundaries: geoBoundaries/Australian Bureau of Statistics (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)).

    How it is worked out: wind shift = a change of more than 60° in 6 h or less, with at least 15 km/h before and after; no overnight recovery = peak humidity between 8 pm and 8 am stays below 55 %; useful rain = 2 mm or more in 6 h. The fan opens 18° plus however much the wind varies within ±3 h and reaches 25 km beyond the edge of the fire: one model cell, not a rate of spread. Methodology

    Where it burned

    HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Nov15 Nov
    15 Nov 2026

    How it evolved, day by day

    5 Nov 2026 · 78 MW · 5 6 Nov 2026 · 4 MW · 2 7 Nov 2026 · 6 MW · 5 8 Nov 2026 · 433 MW · 46 9 Nov 2026 · 640 MW · 81 10 Nov 2026 · 204 MW · 21 11 Nov 2026 · 210 MW · 28 12 Nov 2026 · 30 MW · 3 13 Nov 2026 · 29 MW · 7 14 Nov 2026 · 4 MW · 1 15 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0
    5 Nov 9 Nov 14 Nov

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

    Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (33 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

    The weather it burned in

    35°high
    58km/h · peak gust
    35%lowest humidity

    It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

    This area had burned before

    82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 248 ha in 2016, 738 ha in 2017, 183 ha in 2018, 3,276 ha in 2019, 86 ha in 2020, 101 ha in 2021, 4,194 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,111 ha that had burned before.

    How big is it?

    10 km
    It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Lockhart River where it started
      6,228 ha reached on 5 Nov
      1.7 %

    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 area< 0.1 ha
    Residents< 20

    Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

    Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
    5 Nov 33.6 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
    6 Nov 33.3 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
    7 Nov 32.9 °C 48 % 44 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 43
    8 Nov 33.8 °C 47 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
    9 Nov 34.9 °C 48 % 38 km/h 1.7 mm High 38
    10 Nov 32.9 °C 52 % 47 km/h 0.6 mm High 29
    11 Nov 32.3 °C 49 % 54 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 42
    12 Nov 32.7 °C 51 % 58 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 46
    13 Nov 33.1 °C 48 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
    14 Nov 33.6 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
    15 Nov 34.1 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

    Before and after, from space

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

    Before · 29 Oct 2026
    After · 14 Nov 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 9 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

    PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
    Days over the guideline0 days
    PM1016 µg/m³
    Optical depth0.30
    3 Nov5 Nov7 Nov9 Nov
    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 · 199Every 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 Lockhart River fire last?
    GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 November 2026 and 15 November 2026: 11 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 6,197 hectares (62.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
    Which municipalities burned?
    The fire only entered Lockhart River (6,228 ha, 1.7 %).
    Is the Lockhart River fire still active?
    Yes: satellites detected fire on 15 Nov 2026, 03:38 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
    What was the weather like?
    During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
    What weather is expected at the fire over the next 72 hours?
    The wind is almost calm (1 km/h) and no sharp shifts are expected until Thu 19, 00:00. No strong wind shifts, dry nights or useful rain are expected. Times are local time at the fire. ECMWF IFS forecast (Open-Meteo) computed 15 Nov 2026, 15:27 UTC; this is not an official warning.
    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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 11 November 2026.
    1. Area: 5,284 → 6,175 ha.
    2. Page published (5,284 ha).

    RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

    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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 199 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
    • We have not matched this page with any official record.
    • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
    • 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.
    • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

    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.