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Roper Gulf fire, 5 July 2018 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2018, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3101th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 823 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Burnt area
5,474ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
5 Jul 2018 – 19 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Jul
2018
Heat detections
180
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

5678910111213141516171819

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
54km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 61 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Roper Gulf where it started
    5,462 ha reached on 5 Jul
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
5 Jul 28.9 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Jul 29.0 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Jul 27.8 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Jul 27.0 °C 45 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Jul 26.5 °C 49 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Jul 27.4 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Jul 27.3 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Jul 27.6 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Jul 27.7 °C 42 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Jul 28.7 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jul 29.7 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Jul 28.9 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jul 29.6 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Jul 29.7 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Jul 29.8 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Jul after 29.4 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Jul after 28.3 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul after 27.9 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Jul after 29.3 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Jul after 29.2 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul after 30.2 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Jul after 30.0 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul after 31.2 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Jul after 31.9 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul after 31.1 °C 39 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jun 2018
After · 26 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 · 180Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 July 2018 and 19 July 2018: 15 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 5,474 hectares (54.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roper Gulf (5,462 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.