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Roper Gulf fire, 23 April 2018 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 2 May 2018, 16:31 UTC

The fire started on 23 April 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,001 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2782th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3521 with a page). Number 746 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Victoria Daly · 2024Victoria Daly · 2016Victoria Daly · 2019

Burnt area
6,001ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
23 Apr 2018 – 2 May 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
23 Apr
2018
Heat detections
195
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
140MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Apr2 May
2 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Apr 2018 · 229 MW · 8 24 Apr 2018 · 181 MW · 17 25 Apr 2018 · 0 MW · 1 26 Apr 2018 · 39 MW · 3 27 Apr 2018 · 2 MW · 3 28 Apr 2018 · 367 MW · 58 29 Apr 2018 · 387 MW · 62 30 Apr 2018 · 133 MW · 35 1 May 2018 · 55 MW · 7 2 May 2018 · 7 MW · 1
23 Apr 25 Apr 27 Apr 29 Apr 1 May

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
42km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,987 ha in 2016, 221 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Roper Gulf where it started
    5,998 ha reached on 23 Apr
    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)
23 Apr 33.9 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Apr 33.0 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Apr 32.7 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Apr 33.2 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Apr 32.9 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Apr 33.0 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Apr 32.3 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Apr 32.2 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 May 33.1 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 May 33.5 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 May after 33.6 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 May after 34.4 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 May after 32.8 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 May after 32.6 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 May after 32.7 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 May after 32.9 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 May after 32.4 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 May after 32.7 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 May after 31.6 °C 18 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 May after 27.9 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Apr 2018
After · 9 May 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 · 195Every 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 Roper Gulf fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 April 2018 to 2 May 2018 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 April 2018 to 2 May 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,001 hectares (60.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roper Gulf (5,998 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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. Start date: 27 April 2018 → 23 April 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 27 April 2018 to 2 May 2018. 195 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.