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Roper Gulf fire, 4 August 2018 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2018, 04:01 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,386 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1585th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3496 with a page). Number 428 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2018Roper Gulf · 2022

Burnt area
9,386ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
4 Aug 2018 – 21 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Aug
2018
Heat detections
365
in a single hotspot: 294 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
224MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug21 Aug
21 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 Aug 2018 · 95 MW · 8 5 Aug 2018 · 29 MW · 5 6 Aug 2018 · 8 MW · 2 7 Aug 2018 · 639 MW · 27 8 Aug 2018 · 189 MW · 16 9 Aug 2018 · 213 MW · 36 10 Aug 2018 · 1,574 MW · 64 11 Aug 2018 · 19 MW · 4 12 Aug 2018 · 264 MW · 54 13 Aug 2018 · 192 MW · 28 14 Aug 2018 · 169 MW · 16 15 Aug 2018 · 46 MW · 9 16 Aug 2018 · 41 MW · 10 17 Aug 2018 · 54 MW · 7 18 Aug 2018 · 141 MW · 26 19 Aug 2018 · 125 MW · 24 20 Aug 2018 · 212 MW · 23 21 Aug 2018 · 26 MW · 6
4 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 13 Aug 16 Aug 19 Aug

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
55km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 351 ha in 2016, 255 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 525 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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
    9,461 ha reached on 4 Aug
    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)
4 Aug 29.1 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug 30.7 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug 30.8 °C 41 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
7 Aug 29.2 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
8 Aug 28.9 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
9 Aug 28.9 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Aug 31.3 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Aug 31.0 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Aug 27.8 °C 17 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 53
13 Aug 27.0 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Aug 27.9 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Aug 28.9 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Aug 29.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Aug 30.3 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Aug 31.1 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Aug 30.9 °C 12 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
20 Aug 27.3 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Aug 27.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Aug after 28.1 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Aug after 29.8 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Aug after 31.1 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Aug after 31.0 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Aug after 30.1 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Aug after 31.5 °C 13 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Aug after 30.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Aug after 32.0 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
30 Aug after 30.8 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Aug after 32.1 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jul 2018
After · 28 Aug 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 · 365Every 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 4 August 2018 and 21 August 2018: 18 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 9,386 hectares (93.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roper Gulf (9,461 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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

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
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. 365 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.

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.