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Roper Gulf fire, 22 September 2018 Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2018, 04:39 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2018 in Roper Gulf, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,226 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1057th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3518 with a page). Number 259 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Roper Gulf · 2026Roper Gulf · 2018Roper Gulf · 2026Roper Gulf · 2021

Burnt area
13,226ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
22 Sept 2018 – 22 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Sept
2018
Heat detections
570
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
169MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept22 Oct
22 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2018 · 16 MW · 2 24 Sept 2018 · 11 MW · 4 25 Sept 2018 · 8 MW · 2 26 Sept 2018 · 418 MW · 34 27 Sept 2018 · 1,092 MW · 78 28 Sept 2018 · 300 MW · 34 29 Sept 2018 · 24 MW · 6 30 Sept 2018 · 126 MW · 30 1 Oct 2018 · 261 MW · 29 2 Oct 2018 · 82 MW · 14 3 Oct 2018 · 168 MW · 11 4 Oct 2018 · 13 MW · 4 5 Oct 2018 · 786 MW · 59 6 Oct 2018 · 335 MW · 42 7 Oct 2018 · 327 MW · 34 8 Oct 2018 · 106 MW · 14 9 Oct 2018 · 33 MW · 9 10 Oct 2018 · 39 MW · 17 11 Oct 2018 · 154 MW · 19 12 Oct 2018 · 165 MW · 26 13 Oct 2018 · 112 MW · 21 14 Oct 2018 · 149 MW · 22 15 Oct 2018 · 46 MW · 11 16 Oct 2018 · 128 MW · 17 17 Oct 2018 · 7 MW · 3 18 Oct 2018 · 25 MW · 5 19 Oct 2018 · 26 MW · 7 20 Oct 2018 · 36 MW · 6 21 Oct 2018 · 10 MW · 3 22 Oct 2018 · 61 MW · 7
22 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 3 Oct 8 Oct 13 Oct 18 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
52km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 808 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.4% of the area of London (132 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
    13,211 ha reached on 22 Sept
    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 Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Sept 33.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept 31.5 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept 31.1 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 32.9 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Sept 31.2 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Sept 32.5 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept 32.2 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Sept 31.5 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Sept 31.7 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Oct 32.1 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Oct 32.1 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.6 mm High 33
3 Oct 33.8 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Oct 33.7 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Oct 34.8 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Oct 34.6 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Oct 35.7 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct 36.2 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Oct 35.3 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Oct 35.7 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Oct 36.3 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Oct 33.7 °C 42 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
13 Oct 37.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Oct 37.2 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Oct 37.2 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Oct 36.3 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Oct 34.6 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.7 mm High 34
18 Oct 34.9 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Oct 37.6 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Oct 37.3 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Oct 36.9 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Oct 38.4 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Oct after 38.3 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Oct after 37.5 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Oct after 36.1 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Oct after 37.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Oct after 36.6 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Oct after 37.1 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Oct after 38.7 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Oct after 38.5 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
31 Oct after 36.1 °C 39 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Nov after 35.7 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2018
After · 29 Oct 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 · 570Every 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 22 September 2018 to 22 October 2018 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 September 2018 to 22 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,226 hectares (132.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Roper Gulf (13,211 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

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: 24 September 2018 → 22 September 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 24 September 2018 to 22 October 2018. 570 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.