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Roper Gulf fire, 20 June 2018 East Arnhem, Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2018, 04:14 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,585 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3045th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3514 with a page). Number 805 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2021East Arnhem · 2019East Arnhem · 2019East Arnhem · 2023

Burnt area
5,585ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
20 Jun 2018 – 27 Jun 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
20 Jun
2018
Heat detections
228
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
262MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun27 Jun
28 Jun 2018

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 2018 · 283 MW · 20 21 Jun 2018 · 55 MW · 2 22 Jun 2018 · 1,648 MW · 158 23 Jun 2018 · 172 MW · 25 24 Jun 2018 · 20 MW · 3 25 Jun 2018 · 4 MW · 1 26 Jun 2018 · 49 MW · 8 27 Jun 2018 · 12 MW · 5 28 Jun 2018 · 112 MW · 6
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

29°high
42km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 1 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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. East Arnhem
    5,365 ha reached on 20 Jun
    0.2 %
  2. Roper Gulf where it started
    268 ha reached on 20 Jun
    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)
20 Jun 29.4 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Jun 28.1 °C 42 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jun 28.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jun 27.6 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Jun 28.7 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Jun 29.0 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Jun 28.7 °C 49 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jun 28.6 °C 44 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jun after 28.5 °C 44 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jun after 30.3 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jun after 29.9 °C 48 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jul after 27.7 °C 57 % 47 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jun 2018
After · 4 Jul 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 · 228Every 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 20 June 2018 to 27 June 2018 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 June 2018 to 23 June 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,585 hectares (55.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: East Arnhem (5,365 ha, 0.2 %); Roper Gulf (268 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 June 2018 → 27 June 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 20 June 2018 to 23 June 2018. 228 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.