How long did the Roper Gulf fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 May 2018 to 30 May 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 May 2018 to 23 May 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,137 hectares (201.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roper Gulf (16,888 ha, 0.1 %); West Arnhem (3,239 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-05-13 → 2018-05-30

Roper Gulf fire, 13 May 2018 Roper Gulf, West Arnhem

Out · last detection 30 May 2018, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 13 May 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,137 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 609th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 145 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2018 West Arnhem · 2020 Roper Gulf · 2024 Roper Gulf · 2016

Burnt area: 20,137ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 13 May 2018 – 30 May 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 13 May; 2018
Heat detections: 723; in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 214MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 May30 May

Play back 30 May 2018

How it evolved, day by day

13 May 16 May 17 May 19 May 22 May 26 May 30 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

31°high

60km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,036 ha in 2016, 1,078 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,761 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (201 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

Roper Gulf where it started

16,888 ha reached on 13 May

0.1 %
West Arnhem

3,239 ha reached on 13 May

0.1 %

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	Danger (FWI)
13 May	27.6 °C	21 %	51 km/h	Very high 47
14 May	27.4 °C	19 %	53 km/h	Very high 48
15 May	27.5 °C	14 %	57 km/h	Extreme 54
16 May	26.7 °C	16 %	55 km/h	Extreme 53
17 May	26.8 °C	17 %	58 km/h	Extreme 57
18 May	27.8 °C	26 %	58 km/h	Extreme 52
19 May	28.0 °C	25 %	50 km/h	Very high 48
20 May	29.8 °C	31 %	52 km/h	Very high 47
21 May	30.4 °C	34 %	58 km/h	Very high 47
22 May	29.3 °C	25 %	57 km/h	Very high 47
23 May	29.1 °C	25 %	52 km/h	Very high 45
24 May	31.0 °C	36 %	44 km/h	Very high 39
25 May	31.4 °C	35 %	43 km/h	Very high 39
26 May	31.4 °C	32 %	48 km/h	Very high 40
27 May	30.3 °C	37 %	39 km/h	High 36
28 May	30.0 °C	31 %	42 km/h	High 36
29 May	29.7 °C	30 %	48 km/h	Very high 41
30 May	29.5 °C	31 %	60 km/h	Very high 48
31 May after	29.9 °C	30 %	51 km/h	Very high 44
1 Jun after	29.0 °C	29 %	47 km/h	Very high 41
2 Jun after	28.6 °C	27 %	43 km/h	Very high 40
3 Jun after	27.6 °C	29 %	42 km/h	Very high 39
4 Jun after	26.8 °C	16 %	43 km/h	Very high 45
5 Jun after	26.3 °C	17 %	45 km/h	Very high 46
6 Jun after	27.6 °C	22 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
7 Jun after	28.4 °C	29 %	39 km/h	Very high 40
8 Jun after	29.0 °C	35 %	33 km/h	High 36
9 Jun after	29.4 °C	40 %	38 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 May 2018

After · 6 Jun 2018

Before After

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 · 723Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 13 May 2018 to 30 May 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 May 2018 to 23 May 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,137 hectares (201.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roper Gulf (16,888 ha, 0.1 %); West Arnhem (3,239 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 23 May 2018 → 30 May 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.

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What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 May 2018 to 23 May 2018. 723 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.

Where it burned